The Indian Scout: A Story of the Aztec City

by Gustave Aimard

In the second interview, however, the Spaniards guessed with what an interested design these visits were permitted, and then a real tyranny succeeded on the short joyous conversation of the first day. It was a permanent punishment to the maidens. As Spaniards, and attached to the religion of their fathers, they could not fulfil the High Priest's hopes, while the Indian woman, incapable of playing the false and roguish part to which she was condemned, did not hide from them that, in spite of the honied words and insinuating manner of the Amanani, they must expect to suffer the most frightful tortures, if they refused to devote themselves to the worship of the Sun. The prospect was far from being reassuring. The maidens knew the Indians to be capable of putting their odious threats in execution without the slightest remorse; hence, while promising in their hearts to remain staunch in the faith of their fathers, the poor creatures were devoured by mortal alarm.

Time passed away, and the High Priest began to grow impatient at the slowness of the conversion. The little hope the two maidens had kept up of escaping from the sacrifice demanded of them was gradually deserting them. This painful situation, which was further aggravated by the absence of all news from without, at length produced an illness whose progress was so rapid, that the High Priest considered it prudent to suspend the execution of his ardent project of proselytism.

Let us leave the wretched prisoners for a few moments, almost felicitating themselves on the change that had taken place in their health, as it for a time at least almost freed them from the odious presence to which they were exposed, and take up the course of events which happened to other persons who figure in this story.

So soon as Don Estevan found himself at liberty, he dug his spurs into the flanks of Brighteye's horse, and began a furious race across the forest, whose evident object was to remove him as speedily as possible from the clearing which had all but proved so fearfully fatal to him. A prey to a mad terror which every moment that passed doubled, the wretched man galloped haphazard, without object or idea, following no direction, but flying straight before him, pursued by the hideous phantom of the death which, for an hour that was as long as an age, had bent over his shoulders, and had already stretched forth its skeleton hand to seize him, when a miraculous accident sent a liberator.

Don Estevan, in proportion as lucidity re-entered his brain, and calmness sprung up again in his thoughts, became once more the man he had ever been; that is to say, the implacable villain so justly condemned and executed by Lynch law. Instead of recognising in his deliverance the omnipotent finger of Providence wishing thus to show him the path of repentance, he only saw a naturally accidental fact, and entertained but one thought—that of avenging himself on the men who prostrated him and set their feet on his chest.

No one could say how many hours he thus galloped in the darkness, revolving schemes of vengeance, and casting ironical looks of defiance at Heaven. The whole night was passed in this mad race, and sunrise surprised him at a long distance from the spot where he had undergone his sentence.

He stopped for a moment in order to restore a little connection in his ideas and look around him. The trees, rather scattered at the spot where he halted, enabled him to see between their trunks a plain in front of him, terminating in the distance in tall mountains, whose blue-grey summits mingled in the horizon with the sky: a rather wide river flowed silently between two scarped banks, denuded of vegetation. Don Estevan gave a sigh of relief. Supposing, as was not at all probable, that anyone had started in pursuit, the rapidity of his flight, and the innumerable turns he had taken, must have completely hidden his trail. He advanced slowly to the edge of the forest, resolved to stop for an hour or two to rest his panting steed, and himself take that repose so absolutely necessary after so much fatigue and agony. So soon as he reached the first trees of the wood, he stopped again. Assured himself by a glance round that no human being was in the vicinity, and reassured by the calmness and silence that reigned around him, he dismounted, unsaddled and hobbled his horse, and, lying down on the ground, he began reflecting. His position was far from agreeable. He was alone, almost unarmed, in a strange country, compelled to fly from men of his own colour, and obliged to depend on himself alone to face all the events which might occur, and the dangers that surrounded him on every side.

Assuredly, a man more resolute than was Don Estevan, and gifted by nature with a more powerful organization than he possessed, would, in his place, have felt greatly embarrassed, and would have given way, if not to despair, at least to discouragement. The Mexican, overcome by the atrocious emotions and extraordinary fatigue he had endured during the fatal night which had just passed, fell involuntarily into such a state of prostration and insensibility, that gradually external objects disappeared from his sight, and he only existed in his mind, that ever-shining beacon in the human brain, and which God in his infinite goodness allows to shine there in the darkest gloom, in order to restore to the creature, in extreme situations, the feeling of his strength and the will to struggle.

For a long time Don Estevan had been seated, with his elbow on his knee and his head on his hand, looking without seeing, listening without hearing, when he suddenly started, and drew himself up sharply. A hand had been gently laid on his shoulder. Slight as the touch was, it was enough to arouse the Mexican, and restore him to a sense of his present situation. He looked up: two men, two Indians, were by his side; they were Addick and Red Wolf.

A gleam of joy shone in Don Estevan's eye: these two men, he had a presentiment, were two allies. He wanted them without hoping ever to meet them. In fact, in the desert, who can be certain of meeting those he seeks?