My heart stood still on beholding this, and an emotion of rage shook my heart, for I now remembered having laid them on the table beside me in case of accident, for I once had a friend who was killed by a pistol exploding in his belt. The patrona, while laying the supper table, or bustling about me, had adroitly—but the saints alone know how—removed the caps.
Twenty times I searched every pocket, in the faint and desperate hope of finding a stray one. Not one—they were all below with my holsters.
"Ass that I am!" thought I, replacing them with a sigh in my belt; "this will be a lesson of prudence that may cost me dear."
At that moment the candle-end sank down in the iron holder; it shot one red flush upwards on the cobwebbed ceiling and damp, discoloured walls; on the ill-jointed trap-door which led to the lower story, and expired. I was in darkness at last, with no companions but my Toledo and my own thoughts. The first was silent—the second sufficiently uncomfortable.
Sleepless and watchful, I lay on the miserable pallet for more than an hour, till the silence began to oppress me, and in spite of myself, my eyes were closing. Could it be the drug—could it be the wine that slowly was sealing them up? Nonsense; I had but put it to my lips, and I struggled to shake off the coming sleep. Yet, I must have closed my eyes for a moment, for I started suddenly, like one who dreams he is on the brink of a precipice. A strange shivering—a minute, pricking sensation ran all over me from head to foot, and from a state of drowsiness, I sprang all at once to the sharpest wakefulness, and grasped the hilt of my drawn sabre.
A dim light was now ascending from the floor of the apartment, and I perceived the trap-door was lifted up, and the round bullet-head of the hostalero appeared, with his deep-set stealthy eyes, scanning the bed and its occupant, myself, who affected to be sound asleep. Up, up he came, step by step, until he stood by my side, with one hand grasping his long cuchillo, and a finger on his coarse, blubber-like lips, as if he would impose silence on himself, and still his very breathing.
Mueran del Demonio, what a moment it was! I would not endure it again for a million of reals. He came close to the bed; he stooped over me, the knife was lifted up, and I saw its baleful gleam; but at the same instant there was an upward flash, as I swept my sabre round me, and one stroke cut off three of the robber's fingers, and cleft a fair slice off his right temple—a stroke which stretched him without a cry at my feet. Desperate and furious as a wild beast—half blinded with his own blood, he sprang upon me and we grappled in the dark; but as his wife, that diabolical Asturian, rushed up the trap-stair, armed with a ponderous cajado, to his aid, I flung him on the bed, for he was weak as a child now. Seeing a figure struggling on the miserable pallet, the woman, who was as furious as an enraged tigress, and who, in the uncertain light, believed that figure to be mine, whirled round her head the cajado—which is the favourite staff of the Portuguese, and is usually seven feet long, with a leaden knob at one end of it—and by one blow dashed out her husband's brains as completely as a cannon-ball would have done.
Madre mia, some of that frightful mess flew over me, and that blow ended the matter, for I uttered a cry of horror, and plunging down the trap-stair, threw myself on my horse, and galloped away. On, on I rode, with no wish but to leave that scene of crime behind me, and at the very place where I was met by that venerable shepherd, whom, until my dying hour, I will maintain to be no other than our blessed St. Anthony, but for whose warning I had drunk that poisoned Xeres, and perished—I overtook a troop of the Carbineros of Alentejo, to whom I told my late adventure.
A party was sent to the little inn, where they found the hostalero brained, as I have said, in that miserable loft, and the hostess almost bereft of her senses, such as they were. But the dragoons placed her on a troop horse, and brought her before the Alcalde of Vimiero, which is the nearest town, and before the next day's noon, she had been garotted and buried by the wayside; and you may still see her grave, one mile beyond the gates, on the side of the way that leads towards Estremoz and the mountains.
Two days after, I reached Barbacena, our headquarters, in safety, and paid over to our Father Chaplain, the purse of moidores, containing the pay of our extra Lieutenant-Colonel, the blessed St. Anthony. Only a month ago, we marched through the pass of the Sierra, and I found the old posada roofless by the roadside, for it is shunned like that place of horror, the Rio de Muerte; the grass has grown on its floor, and the wild vine overtops its chimney; the merriest muleteer becomes silent as he passes the place, and whips his lagging team down the mountain side, without looking once behind him.