[CHAPTER XVIII.]
THE AMBUSH.
For some minutes after the departure of the guerillero, the melancholy caravan silently continued its journey. The last words uttered by Cuéllar had gone home, however: the count and the vaquero felt involuntarily restless, and without daring to impart their gloomy presentiments to each other, they advanced with excessive prudence, sniffing the air, so to speak, and starting at the least suspicious movement in the bushes. It was a little past five a.m.: it was that moment when nature appears to be sunk in contemplation, and when day and night, struggling together with almost equal force, melt into each other and produce that opaline gleam, whose misty tints impart to objects a vague and undetermined appearance, which renders them somewhat fantastic. A greyish vapour rose from the ground and produced a transparent fog, which the sunbeams, gradually growing in intensity, rent at spots, lighting up one part of the landscape and leaving the other in shadow: in a word, it was no longer night and not yet day. In the distance the numerous domes of the buildings of Puebla appeared, standing out in confused masses against the dark blue sky: the trees, washed by the abundant night dew, had grown green: on each leaf trembled a crystalline drop of water and their branches agitated by the morning breeze, smote each other softly with mysterious murmurings: already the small birds concealed beneath the foliage were uttering twitterings, and the wild oxen raised their heads above the tall grass with hoarse lowings. The fugitives were following a winding track beset on either side by factitious embankments, thrown up for the cultivation of the agave, which limited the horizon to an extremely narrow circle, and prevented that careful survey of the environs, which was perhaps necessary for the general safety of the caravan. The count approached Dominique, and leaning over the saddle, said in a low cautious voice:
"My friend, I know not why, but I feel an extreme anxiety: the farewell of that bandit painfully affected me: it seems to forebode a speedy, terrible and inevitable misfortune for us, and yet we are only a short distance from the town, and the tranquillity that prevails around us ought to reassure me."
"It is this tranquillity," the young man replied in the same key, "which causes me like yourself indescribable agony: I too have a presentiment of a misfortune; we are here in a wasp's nest, and no place would be better for an ambush."
"What is to be done?" the count muttered.
"I do not know exactly, for it is a difficult case: still I feel convinced that we ought to redouble our prudence. Place don Andrés and his daughter in front, warn the peons to march with finger on trigger, and be ready for the slightest alarm: in the meanwhile, I will go out scouting and if the enemy is pursuing us, I will contrive to throw him off the track: but we must not lose a single instant."
While speaking thus, the vaquero dismounted, threw his bridle to a peon, placed his gun on his left arm and ascended the right hand embankment, where he almost immediately disappeared among the bushes that bordered the path.
When left alone, the count immediately set about following his friend's advice: he consequently formed a rearguard of the most resolute and best armed peons, and gave them orders attentively to watch the approaches; but he concealed from them, through fear of terrifying them, the gravity of the events he foresaw. The majordomo, as if he divined the count's anxiety and shared his suspicions of an approaching attack, had placed don Andrés and his daughter in the centre of a small group of devoted servants, of whom he took the command, and hurrying on the horses, he left an interval of about one hundred yards between himself and the main body. Doña Dolores, overwhelmed by the terrible emotions of the night, had paid very slight attention to the arrangements made by her friends, and mechanically followed the new impulse given her, in all probability unconscious of the new dangers that menaced her, and only thinking of one thing, watching over her father, whose state of prostration was becoming more and more alarming. In fact, since his departure from the hacienda, in spite of his daughter's entreaties, don Andrés had not uttered a syllable, with fixed, lacklustre eyes, with his head bowed on his chest and his body agitated by a continuous nervous trembling, he left his horse to guide itself, without appearing to know whither he was going, so utterly had sorrow broken all his energy and will.
Leo Carral, who was devoted to his master and young mistress and who understood how incapable the old gentleman would be of offering the slightest resistance in the probable event of an attack, had especially recommended the servants he selected to serve as an escort to don Andrés, not to lose sight of him; and in the event of a combat, to make every possible effort to draw him out of the medley, and protect him as far as possible from danger: then at a signal the count gave him, he turned back and rejoined him.