THE AVENGER.
In order fully to comprehend the ensuing facts, we are constrained to relate here an event which occurred about twenty years before our story commences.
At that remote period Texas belonged, if not de facto, still de jure, to Mexico. Marvellously situated on the Mexican Gulf, endowed with a temperate climate and a fertile soil, which, if tickled with a spade, laughs with a harvest, Texas is assuredly one of the richest countries in the New World. Hence, the Government, foreseeing the future of this province, did all in its power to populate it.
Unfortunately, it effected very little, incapable as it was of populating even Mexico. Still, a considerable number of Mexicans went across and settled in Texas.
Among the men who let themselves be tempted by the magic promises of this virgin soil were two brothers, Don Stefano and Don Pacheco de Irala, of the best families in the province of Nuevo-León. The active part they played in the war of independence had ruined them, and not obtaining from the liberals, after the triumph of their cause, the reward they had a right to expect for the services they had rendered—Don Gregorio, their father, having even paid with his life for his attachment to the party—they had no other resource but settling in Texas, a new country, in which they had hopes of speedily re-establishing their fortunes.
Owing to their thorough knowledge of agriculture, and their intelligence, they soon gave a considerable extension to their settlement, which they had the pleasure of seeing daily grow more prosperous, in defiance of Indians, buffaloes, tempests, and illness. The Hacienda del Papagallo (Parrot farm), inhabited by the two brothers, was, like all the houses in this country, which are continually exposed to the inrods of the savages, a species of fortress built of carved stone and surrounded by a thick and embrasured wall, with a gun at each corner: it stood on the top of a rather lofty hill, and commanded the plain for a considerable distance.
Don Pacheco, the elder of the two brothers, was married and had two daughters, little creatures scarce three years of age, whose joyous cries and ravishing smiles filled the interior of the hacienda with gaiety. Hardly three leagues from the farm was another, occupied by Northern Americans, adventurers of more than dubious conduct, who had come to the country no one knew how, and who, since they inhabited it, led a mysteriously problematical existence, which gave birth to the strangest and most contradictory reports about them.
It was whispered that, under the guise of peaceful farmers, these men maintained relations with the bandits who flocked into the country from every side, and that they were the secret chiefs of a dangerous association of malefactors, who had ravaged the country for several years past with impunity. On several occasions the two brothers had disputes with these unpleasant neighbours about cattle that had disappeared and other pecadillos of the same nature. In a word, they lived with them on the footing of an armed peace.
A few days previous to the period to which this chapter refers, Don Pacheco had a sharp altercation with one of these Americans of the name of Wilkes, about several slaves the fellow tried to seduce from hacienda, and the result was, that Don Pacheco, naturally hot-tempered, gave him a tremendous horsewhipping. The other swallowed the insult without making any attempt to revenge himself; but he had withdrawn, muttering the most terrible threats against Don Pacheco.
Still, as we have said, the affair had no further consequences. Nearly a month had passed, and the brothers had heard nothing from their neighbours. On the evening of the day which we take up our narrative, Don Stefano, mounted on a mustang, was preparing to leave the hacienda, to ride to Nacogdoches, where important business called him.