"Since that day has been a robber and outlaw: as such he has eluded my search. But now—" He cocked and raised his carbine.
"For Heaven's sake—for our own sakes, beware what you do, Gomez! We must retreat rather than attack. Our lives would pay for our rashness in encountering so many."
"God be wi' us! Would ye be temptin' Providence by firing on sic a nest o' caterans?" said Evan angrily, as he dragged Pedro from the wall towards the gloomy dingle. "Come awa, ye desperate loon. If ye haud your life at a bawbee only, I haud mine dearer than a' the goud in the hill o' Keir; and there lies the ransom o' seven crowned kings."
"Diavolo! I will not be restrained," cried the dragoon fiercely, disengaging himself from the grasp of the Highlander. "I will revenge Isobel Zuares, or die!" He rushed to the loop-hole, and fired at the group of bandits. Julian Diaz, shot through the heart, fell dead among his terrified comrades.
"Follow me, senors! I know every pass and thicket of the wood, and will easily elude their pursuit," exclaimed Pedro, dashing into the bushes, and threading his way at random through the maze of dark thickets and entangled underwood. The two mountaineers, acting on the first impulse of the moment, also sought safety by retiring, and followed Pedro with ease and rapidity through every obstacle, having been accustomed from their boyhood to thread the dense pine forests of the Scottish highlands.
Onward they hurried at random, pressing aside the heavy bushes and branches, getting themselves bruised and torn by sharp brambles and hard stumps; but wounds and contusions were unfelt or unheeded in the excitement of the moment, as they pressed forward regardless of immediate consequences. Ronald was boiling with inward rage and vexation to find himself retiring thus from wretches whom he so heartily hated and despised, and more than once he almost resolved to stand and fight against them to the death; but his discretion overruled his desperate resolution, pointing out that flight and deferring his revenge till another time would be the most prudent course to pursue; but that a future time would ever be, seemed at present very doubtful. Fiercely in pursuit, following their path with scrupulous precision, came the outlaws, eager for plunder and revenge. These savage desperadoes had, however, been distanced by some hundred yards; but their shouts, outcries, and the tread of their feet were distinctly heard as they pursued with the speed and accuracy of men accustomed to the ground, and to the irregular warfare of guerillas.
Now and then the gloom of the dark wood was illumined by a lurid flash, as a random shot was fired in the direction of the fugitives, who more than once had narrow escapes from being killed or wounded; the latter was to be dreaded, as it would have ensured, perhaps, a death of torture from the poniards of the bandits. A part of the forest was now gained where the trees grew thinner and the ground was more open; but their path was embarrassed by piled masses of rocks, roots and stumps of decayed trees, entwined bushes, fallen cork-trees, deep gorges and holes, and here and there the stony bed of some bubbling brook. Nevertheless they still kept their pursuers at the same distance, and trod on quickly and in silence.
The moon, which had been obscured for some time, now broke forth and lighted the wild scenery with the pale splendour of its silvery light.
"These wretches are undoubtedly gaining upon us," said Ronald, pausing a moment to listen and draw breath. "Your ill-timed rashness, Pedro, will certainly cost us our lives."
"For my own I care not; but I regret that yours, noble senor, or that of my gallant comrade, should be placed in such deadly peril by me."