The Red Track: A Story of Social Life in Mexico

by Gustave Aimard

THE BEGINNING OF THE STRUGGLE.

Ambition is the most terrible and deceptious of all human passions, in the sense that it completely dries up the heart, and can never be satisfied.

General Don Sebastian Guerrero was not one of those coldly cruel men, solely governed by the instinct of art, or whom the smell of blood intoxicates; but, with the implacable logic of ambitious persons, he went direct to his object, overthrowing, without regret or remorse, all the obstacles that barred his way to the object he had sworn to reach, even if he were compelled to wade in blood up to his knees, and trample on a pile of corpses. He only regarded men as pawns in the great game of chess he was playing, and strove to justify himself, and stifle the warnings of his terrified conscience, by the barbarous axiom employed by the ambitious in all ages and all countries, that the end justifies the means.

His secret ambition, which, on a day of pretended frankness, he had partly revealed in an interview with the Count de Prébois Crancé at Hermosillo, was not to render himself independent, but simply to be elected, by means of a well-arranged pronunciamiento, President of the Mexican Republic.

It was not through hatred that General Guerrero was so obstinately bent on destroying the count. Ambitious men, who are ever ready to sacrifice their feelings to the interests of their gloomy machinations, know neither hatred nor friendship. Hence we must seek elsewhere the cause of the judicial murder of the count which was so implacably carried out. The general feared the count, as an adversary who would constantly thwart him in Sonora, where the first meshes of the net he wished to throw over Mexico were spun—an adversary ready to oppose the execution of his plans by claiming the due performance of the articles of partnership—a performance which, in the probable event of an insurrection excited by the general, would have become impossible, by plunging the country for a lengthened period into a state of crisis and general suspension of trade, which would have been most hostile to the success of the lofty conceptions of the noble French adventurer.[1]

But the count had scarce fallen on the beach of Guaymas ere the general recognized the falseness of his calculations, and the fault he had committed in sacrificing him. In fact, leaving out of the question the death of his daughter, the only being for whom he retained in some corner of his heart a little of that fire which heaven illumes in all parents for their children, he found that he had exchanged a loyal and cautious adversary for an obstinate enemy—the more formidable because, caring for nothing, and having no personal ambition, he would sacrifice everything without hesitation or calculation in behalf of the vengeance which he had solemnly vowed to obtain by any means, over the still quivering body of his friend.

This implacable enemy, whom neither seduction nor intimidation could arrest or even draw back, was Valentine Guillois.

Under these circumstances, the general committed a graver fault than his first one—a fault which was fated to have incalculable consequences for him. Being very imperfectly acquainted with Valentine Guillois, unaware of his inflexible energy of will, and ranking him in his mind with those wood rangers, the Pariahs of civilization, who have only courage to fire, in a moment of despair, a shot from behind a tree, but whose influence was after all insignificant, he despised him.

Valentine was careful not to dissipate, by any imprudent step, his enemy's mistake, or even arouse his suspicions.

At the time of the Count de Prébois Crancé's first expedition, when all seemed to smile on him, and his followers already saw the complete success of their bold undertaking close at hand, Valentine had been entrusted by his friend with various important operations and difficult missions to the rich rancheros and hacenderos of the province. Valentine had performed the duties his friend confided to him with his usual loyalty and uprightness of mind, and had been so thoroughly appreciated by the persons with whom chance had brought him into connection, that all had remained on friendly terms with him and given him unequivocal proofs of the sincerest friendship, especially upon the death of the count.