"¡Voto a brios!" he muttered in Spanish, "Have I been so maladroit as to let these crafty men read my secret thoughts? Oh, it is impossible! Still—nonsense," he added, as he haughtily raised his head, and looked defiantly around him, "what do I care after all? If I succeed, each will acknowledge me to be right. Does not success justify the most desperate enterprises, and this is far from being one."
These reflections seemed to restore him all the confidence and audacity which his father's remarks and White Crow's malice had momentarily shaken, and he walked with a calm look and careless demeanour toward the two chiefs, who were mounting at the moment, as he wished to take leave of them before starting. The compliments were short and cold on both sides, for these three men were eager to separate. Brought up in a different medium, and in ideas diametrically opposed, the Stag and his two comrades could not understand each other, and the sachems even involuntarily felt an antipathy for their young colleague.
Running Water was right in the remonstrance which he addressed to his son. Paternal love on one side, on the other his hatred of the Mexicans, rendered him clear-sighted. A man, however firm his character may be, does not adopt with impunity the customs and habits of men in a more advanced stage of civilization than himself, and pass his childhood and youth in the midst of the comfort and luxury ignored in savage life, which, while freeing man from physical apprehensions, enlarge his ideas, by giving him the leisure to think and live, no longer through the senses, but through the heart.
The Stag, destined by his father to serve as the instrument of the revenge which he wished to take on Don Aníbal de Saldibar and his family, had been so well trained by Running Water, that his entrance to the hacienda met with no difficulty. The boy had begun by playing a long studied part, then, by degrees, without knowing how or why it took place, the fiction was converted into a reality, and the Comanche grew to regard almost with terror the moment when he would be compelled to return to the independent life of the prairies, and resume the nomadic existence of his tribe. This repugnance for the customs of his fathers emanated neither from any gratitude he felt for Don Aníbal's constant kindness to him, nor from friendship he felt for those who brought him up.
Sotavento was naturally ungrateful, moreover he cordially hated white men generally, and his benefactor particularly; but he had quickly grown accustomed to the life he led; it seemed to him a real paradise in comparison with what awaited him in the desert. By degrees the faith of his tribe was effaced in his heart, to make room for another that was wider, and more in accordance with his instincts and appetites; and he regarded the mission with which he had been intrusted as a heavy burden from which he would be delighted to be delivered. No man is perfect; however strong he may be, he cannot continually have the same idea of pursuing the same object.
His father's implacable hatred of the white men, which was comprehensible in the medium in which the chief lived, was not so for his son; it was only at intervals, when he witnessed an insult dealt to a man of colour, that his Indian blood was revealed in him, and his hatred was re-kindled. Sotavento was vexed at this indifference; he tried to overcome it by all means, and when he was among his own people, his protestations were made in good faith, for he then believed what he said, so much did he desire in his heart that it should be true. Unfortunately for him, he had scarce returned to the hacienda, ere his ideas completely changed, his resolutions evaporated, and he felt himself beneath a far more powerful influence, an influence whose strength was gradually revealed in him, and eventually overpowered whatever efforts he might attempt to escape from it.
Under the pressure of the new feeling which mastered him, the Indian felt all the ferocious instincts of the race to which he belonged aroused in him; from this moment, forgetting all other interests, he had but one thought—it was to employ, in carrying out successfully the daring plan he had formed, the confidence he enjoyed among the chiefs and the forces of which he could dispose at a given moment. The hour which the Indian had selected for the realization of his project and the execution of his bold plans had arrived, and he audaciously set to work, without hesitation or without scruple, caring little about marching over corpses, provided that these corpses were so many steps of a ladder enabling him to attain the extraordinary result he desired.