Having left Buenos Aires several hours ago, they ought long before this to have reached the rancho, which lay on the road they had to follow in order to get to the hacienda where Don Guzman hoped to meet his brother. But at a little distance from the town, Don Bernardo Pedrosa had managed somehow or other to cut his bonds; he slipped off the horse on which he had been placed, threw himself among the tall grasses, and disappeared before anyone suspected his flight.
Don Guzman had lost a good deal of time in marching for the fugitive, whose traces he could not find, and had only abandoned the pursuit when convinced that all his efforts to recover his prisoner were in vain. Recalling his peones, who were scattered right and left, he had resumed the road to the hacienda, feeling extremely uneasy for the consequences of his prisoner's escape; for he knew Don Bernardo too well to suppose for an instant that he would not strain every nerve to avenge the insult he had met with at his hands.
When Don Guzman was still about half a league from the rancho, some fugitives, escaped from the massacre, had run blindly among his men, and warned him of what was going on. Without suspecting how important these news might be to himself, his natural generosity excited the wish to assist, if possible, the persons engaged in this terrible affray; so Don Guzman, well acquainted with the ferocity of the Buenos-Airean tyrant ruffians, had increased the pace of his horses, and galloped in to aid the unfortunate people in their contest with the mashorqueras. His unexpected arrival decided the affair.
The lieutenant, finding flight impossible, retired step by step, fighting like a lion, and withdrew all his men into the rancho, himself remaining last in order to secure their retreat.
Don Torribio—the Butcher, as he was called—scorned to ask quarter. He himself had never granted it to a soul. The extremity to which he found himself reduced, far from diminishing his courage, had increased it tenfold. Feeling his last hour was come—that no human aid could save him—he resolved to fight to the last breath, and sell his life as dearly as possible.
The mashorqueras, following the example of their leader, drew fresh courage from the depths of their despair, and once within the rancho, busied themselves in fortifying it, so as to carry on the strife as long as they could, and to fall after an heroic resistance.
The doors and windows were barricaded with the utmost care; holes were knocked in the walls; and the ruffians, half-intoxicated with previous and still-continued libations, waited firmly for the attack, determined to die bravely in the assault their enemies would soon make on the rancho.
However contrary to their expectations, a long time elapsed without their adversaries commencing the attack. This suspension of hostilities, which was incomprehensible,—for they were ignorant of all that was going on outside,—gave them great uneasiness, and made the bravest of them tremble.
Man is so constituted that, however firmly he may have made up his mind to face death—however convinced he may be that his last hour is come—however prepared for the struggle, the consequences of which he knows and accepts beforehand—if that final struggle is delayed, his resolution fades, the fever that sustained him dies out, and he begins to fear, not death, for that he knows to be inevitable, but the agonies which he fancies may precede death. He creates a thousand sinister chimeras; and the unknown danger which threatens him, without his being able to divine how or whence it will come, appears to him a thousand times more terrible than that which he was prepared to face bravely and with a resolute heart.
The mashorqueras vainly sought, in copious draughts of aguardiente, a remedy for the wild terror which gradually overcame them. The mournful silence which reigned around them, the obscurity, wrapping them up as in a shroud, and the forced inaction to which they were condemned, concurred, in spite of their efforts, to increase the invincible terror that had seized upon them. The lieutenant alone preserved his ferocious energy, and awaited patiently the striking of the hour for his last battle.