"The name of the man in whose clutches you are at this very moment."
"What! the Tigercat? That redoubtable bandit, whose numberless crimes have shocked the land for so long; that man who seems endowed with a diabolical power to accomplish the atrocious deeds with which he incessantly sullies himself;—is that monster near us?"
"He is; and I warn you to be prudent, for perhaps he hears you at this moment, although invisible to your eyes and mine."
"What do I care?" energetically exclaimed Don Pedro. "Away with caution, since we are once in the power of this demon; he is a man devoid of pity, and my life is no longer my own."
"What do you know about it, Señor Don Pedro de Luna?" answered a mocking voice.
The hacendero trembled, and recoiled a step, uttering a stifled cry.
The Tigercat, bounding with the agility of the animal from which he took his name, had leaped upon the summit of an elevated rock which overhung the pathway some distance off, and now dropped lightly on the ground two paces from Don Pedro.
There was an instant of terrible silence. The two men, thus placed face to face, their eyes flashing, their lips compressed with rage, examined each other with ardent curiosity. It was the first time the hacendero had seen the terrible partisan, the fame of whose thirst for blood had reached the most ignorant villagers in the land, and who for thirty years had spread terror over the Mexican frontiers.
We will give, in a few words, the portrait of this man, who is destined to play an important part in our history.
The Tigercat was a species of Colossus, six feet high; his broad shoulders and limbs, from which the muscles stood out in marble rigidity, showed that, though long past the prime of life, his strength still existed in all its integrity; his long locks, white as the snows on Coatepec, fell in disorder on his shoulders, and mingled with the grizzly beard that covered his breast. His forehead was broad and open; he had the eye of the eagle, under the brows of the lion; his whole person offered, in a word, a complete type of the man of the desert,—grand, strong, majestic, and implacable. Although his skin was stained by every inclemency of weather till it had almost acquired the colour of brick, it was nevertheless easy to recognise, in the clearly defined lines of his face, that this man belonged to the race of whites.