[CHAPTER XIV.]
THE TRAVELLERS.
The events we have undertaken to narrate are so mingled with incidents intertwined in each other by that fatality of accident which governs human life that we are compelled once more, to our great regret, to interrupt our story, and let the reader be present at a scene which took place not far from the Rubio ford, on the same day that the events occurred which we have described in preceding chapters.
At about one o'clock of the tarde, that is to say, at the moment when the beams of the sun, which has reached its zenith, pour down on the prairie such an intense heat, that everything which lives and breathes seeks shelter in the deepest part of the woods, three horsemen passed over the ford, and boldly entered the path Don Miguel Ortega was destined to follow a few hours later.
These horsemen were white men, and what is more, Mexicans; it was easy to perceive, at the first glance, that they had not the slightest connection with any class of the adventurers who, under various names, such as Gambusinos, hunters, trappers, wood rangers, or pirates, swarm on the Western Prairies, which they incessantly cross in every direction.
The dress of these horsemen was that usually worn by the Mexican hacenderos on the frontiers:—The wide brimmed hat, gallooned, and decorated with the toquilla, the manga; the short calzoneras, open at the knee; the zarapé; the botas vaqueras, and the armas de agua, without which no one ventures on the desert. They were armed with rifles, revolvers, navajas, and machetes. Their horses, at this moment oppressed by the heat, but slightly refreshed by passing the ford, held their heads up proudly, and showed that, if necessary, they could have gone a long journey, in spite of their apparent fatigue.
Of the three horsemen, one seemed to be the master, or at least the superior, of the other two. He was a man of fifty years of age, with hard, energetic features, imprinted, however, with rare frankness, and great resolution; he was tall, well built, and robust; and he sat upright and stiff on his saddle, with that confidence which denotes the old soldier. His companions belonged to the class of Indios Manzos, a bastard race, in which Spanish blood and Indian blood are so mixed that it is impossible to assign them any characteristic type. Still, the richness of their dress, and the way in which they rode by the first horseman's side, rendered it easy to guess that they were confidential servants, men whose fidelity had been long proved—almost friends, in short, and not domestics, in the vulgar acceptation of the term. As far as it is possible to recognize the age of an Indian, in whose face traces of decrepitude are nearly always invisible, these two men must have reached middle age, that is, from forty to forty-five years.
These three horsemen rode a short distance behind each other, with a thoughtful and sorrowful air: at times they turned a glance of discouragement around, stifled a sigh, and continued their journey with drooping heads, like men convinced they have undertaken a task beyond their strength, but whom their will and, before all, their devotion urge onwards at all risks.
The presence of these strangers on the banks of the Rubio was, indeed, one of those unusual facts which no one would have been able to explain, and which would certainly have greatly surprised the hunters or Indians who might have seen them.