"Oh, tell it, by all means, Partisan," cried Gordon, eager to atone for his late petulance, and to divert his wife's apprehension; "I hope it is a love tale."
"'Cato's a proper person'" answered Delacroix, laughing. "You see I quote, lieutenant. But here goes my story.
"It was a little better than a year ago," he began, "that I first visited this part of the country, which I know—every pass, glen, and pond, and rivulet of it—as if it were my own garden. All then was violence, and fierce, irregular strife, and vengeful indiscriminate warfare and confusion.
"I was alone on this good horse which I now ride, and armed as you now see me. At times I would join this or that band of rangers, when on some actual service which promised excitement and the chance of action, I for the most part scouted by myself.
"On this occasion, however, I had a special duty to perform, being charged with dispatches from the general to the chief of the band, which will not name, nor otherwise designate, except as being ever the most daring and successful in the onslaught, although too often the most merciless in the moment of victory."
"Well, it was a lovely summer's evening, as ever shone out of Heaven, when I passed through this belt of forest; not exactly here, or in this direction, for I came in farther to the southeastward, and approached the clearing which surrounds the plantation, whither we now are bound. When suddenly, as I rode along, following the track of the horse hoofs, which I could easily distinguish in the mossy greensward, and judging by many certain indications that I could not now be far behind them, though I heard nothing to denote their vicinity; when suddenly—I say, I caught the distant sounds of merriment, and revelry; the light cadences of the guitar, the merry laugh of girls, the deep rich voices of the male singers, in the harmonious Spanish tongue, and all the glee and anxiety of fandango.
"I felt a momentary sense of pleasure, for I knew that I was in time, which I had feared might not be the case; and that the attack, which it was my mission to prevent or at least to render bloodless, had not as yet taken place. The next instant a sudden doubt, a great fear fell upon me. How could it be that I should be so close to the rancho and the band, of which I was in pursuit, yet closer, but unseen, unheard and unsuspected. I knew that not a moment must be lost. That even now the rangers must be stealing with ready arms upon their victims; that even now the doom of the gay lancers must be sealed, unless my presence should arrest it. I gave my good horse the spur, and throwing the rein upon his neck, galloped at the top of his speed along the intricate and mazy wood-track.
"Never, in all my life, did I spur so hard; and never did a road seem so long, or so devious; nor was this the effect of imagination only; for I have since ascertained by actual inspection although the distance, as the bird flies from the spot, where I first heard the music, to the rancho whence it proceeded, is but a short mile, the road by which alone you can reach it, measures three at the least, winding it to and fro to avoid pathless brakes and deep barrancas, and is exceedingly deep and miry.
"The sound of my horse's tramp, splashing through the deep clay, was already heard by the lancers, and heard, alas! by their ambushed foes, when I fear it spurred to accelerated action; when suddenly from the wood to my left, the shrill blast of the bugle rose piercingly upon the night air, and was answered by a second at a little distance. There was an instant's pause, breathless and awful as the lull that precedes the burst of a thunderstorm; and then a long loud shout burst out on all sides, and the quick running rattle of a hundred rifle-shots fired in quick succession. God! what a shriek succeeded! And then the clash of blades, and the blasphemies and yells of the charging Texans, and the deep oaths and dying groans of the slaughtered Spaniards and the howling of hounds and mastiffs; and, above all, piercing my very brain, the maddening screams of women pealed up in horrid dissonance to the peaceful heavens, which, in a moment afterward, were crimsoned with the glare of the rushing flames, making the twilight scenery of the calm forest lurid and ruddy as the fabulous groves of hell!
"When I heard that tremendous uproar, and saw the outburst of that furious conflagration, I spurred my horse the faster, and at last, issuing from the forest, came upon such a scene of horror, blood and devastation, as I trust it may never be my fate to look upon again.