"Of carrying on our trade on a grand scale, eh? You were right: there is nothing like doing things properly, if you wish to be held in estimation. Well, be at ease; I will procure that pleasure. At any rate, if luck desert you, you will have the advantage of being shot instead of being hanged or garotted, and that is a consolation."
"Yes," El Buitre said quickly; "in that way a man dies like a gentleman."
"And is not dishonoured, I allow. Ah! The filibusters of old were lucky fellows; they conquered empires, and handed down their names to posterity, the exploits of the hero easily causing the crimes of the bandit to be forgotten."
"Will you never be serious?"
"I am only too much so, on the contrary; for, as you see, although you did not confide in me, I am preparing you a place by the side of the Cortez, the Almagros, and Pizarros, whose glory has so long prevented you sleeping."
"You may jest, Red Blood," the salteador said with an accent of profound emotion; "but if, as I suppose, you appreciate my character at its true value, you know that I only seek one thing—to regenerate these unhappy races, whom a brutalising subjection has plunged during so many centuries into a degrading barbarism."
"You only wish for the welfare of humanity of course," the bandit said with an ironical laugh. "We should not be worthy sons of Uncle Sam, that land of liberty and theoretical philanthropy, did we not dream of the amelioration of society. That is the reason why, while biding our time, we have become of our private authority redressers of wrong, and gentlemen of the road—a charming trade, I may remark parenthetically, and which we carry on conscientiously."
"Go to the deuce, you inexplicable scamp!" the young man exclaimed in a passion. "Shall I never know how to speak or how to deal with you?"
"No," he replied seriously, "no, John, so long as you try to play at hide and seek with me, who know every thought of your heart. Cease to display these pretensions to honesty, which deceive nobody, not even yourself, and become frankly a bandit chief till you can be something else. When the moment has arrived it will be time to put on a cloak of hypocrisy, which will deceive the fools, and consolidate the position you have acquired."
At this moment the shriek of the owl was heard in the thickest part of the forest.