Benito had taken the other's zarapé which he spread over the girl. That blanket was their only appendage; beside the scanty covering which the three wore, weapons, water bottle and food container, they had none. A critical position this for the small party, weaponless and foodless in the waste! A disarmed man is reckoned as dead in such a wild! Struggling is impossible against the incalculable foes that either crush a solitary adventurer by their mass, or deputize, so to say, some such executioner as he whom we saw to have slain the dog, and we hear to have rid the three Mexicans of their horses and equipments. The story of how this deprivation came about is short and lamentable.
[CHAPTER II.]
ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE.
Don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente was the son of that General Bustamente, twice president of the Mexican Republic. When his father, cast down from power, was forced to flee with his family to take final refuge at Guayaquil, the boy was only five or six years old. Suffering with fever, which made the voyage dangerous for him, the child was left at Guaymas in charge of a faithful adherent, who found no better way of saving the son of the proscript from persecution than to take him as one of his own little family up the San José Valley, where he had a ranch. The boy remained there and grew up to the age when we encountered him.
His rough but trusty guardian let the youth run wild, teaching him to ride and shoot as the only needful accomplishments. Benito, falling into the company of the remnant of purer-blooded Indians, supposed to be the last of the original possessors of that region, relished their vagabond life exceedingly. Not only did he spend weeks at a time in hunts with them, with an occasional running fight with the Yaqui tribe, and even the Apaches raiding Sonora; but, at the season for pearl diving, accompanied them in their boats, not only in the Gulf, but down the mainland and up the seacoast of the peninsula. La Paz he knew well, and the Isles of Pearls were familiar in every cranny.
Now, when the news of his father's death in exile came to Benito, he was a hunter and horseman doubled by seaman and pearl fisher, such as that quarter of the world even seldom sees.
So little on land, both enemies and followers of the copresident lost all trace of the son.
Moreover, in the land of revolution in permanency, the offspring of a once ruler are personally to blame if they call dangerous attention on themselves.
On shore, however, don Benito had noticed the daughter of a neighbour, one don José Miranda, formerly in the navy. After a couple of years' wedded life, the latter was left a widower with an only daughter, who had become this charming Dolores, now slumbering under her father's zarapé. Her education was confided to a poor sister of the captain, who was about the only enemy young Bustamente had in his courtship. Captain Miranda was very fond of the youth, and it was agreed ere long that there should be a wedding at the Noria de las Pasioneras (Well house of the Passionflowers) as soon as Benito reached the age of five-and-twenty.