His long, sinewy hands clutched his foe around the neck. He draws up his feet, and places them in Despierto’s lap. Then grasping the cable, so massive that he can scarcely span it, he rests his feet upon the shoulders of his companion.
The mouth of the shaft is close at hand, but the bark-rope now fails. It slipped from the cable, and dropped over the body of Estevan Despierto, who had grasped the rope with a death-clutch. A hastily-formed noose is thrown from the side of the shaft. It misses Sayosa and falls upon the upturned face of the other.
Crazed with terror, he releases one hand to grasp it, thus sealing his own death-warrant. The smooth, hard cable slipped through his benumbed hand. He sees his folly and strives to redeem it; but it is too late. His hand only closes upon the end that he had severed with a far different intention, and, as his body swiftly descends the ghastly shaft, one wild, piercing shriek is all; it was his last breath.
Nearly unconscious, but still clinging tenaciously to the cable, Marcos Sayosa was rescued from what had seemed certain death, and then, when he was once more upon the earth, that he had mentally bidden good-by, he sunk into a deep swoon, that for a time appeared to be death.
For an hour he remained thus, and the miners had nearly all rushed up from the bowels of the earth, to learn the cause of the catastrophe, and who was the victim. The fall had been heard, but upon inspection, no clue could be gained as to the identity of the ghastly man that strewed the floor. The severed end of the cable was found, and from its clean-cut edges, they knew that foul play had brought on the result. The old miner, who had witnessed the ascent, came, and, as he saw that the rope had been cut below the place where the stranger had been secured, he whispered that the victim was their comrade, Marcos Sayosa, the chief of the Scarlet Shoulders. With wild shouts and vows of vengeance, the miners swarmed up the side shafts to avenge their comrade’s murder; for he was the idol of their mine.
After a time, the young miner was able to relate the story of his fearful peril and narrow escape; and, from the evidence of the old miner, that the stranger had taken the upper position, his statement was not doubted. But when he told the victim’s name, a murmur of surprise and commiseration ran around the crowd, for Estevan Despierto had been a general favorite, although not in so high a degree as Sayosa.
As soon as the young miner recovered his strength, from passing through the terrible ordeal, he resumed his clothes, and mounting a horse that one of his comrades had brought for his use, he slowly rode off toward the jacale of tio Tomas Ventura.
CHAPTER IX.
THE JAROCHO’S PRISONER.
An old, gray-haired man, unarmed and upon foot, was slowly and wearily walking along a narrow, faintly-defined pathway that wound, leading up and around a precipitous hill that might almost be called a mountain. He was dressed in a travel-stained suit of frayed and torn clothes, that gave him the appearance of one of the beggars that may be met with in the province described. His tall and once powerful frame was bowed somewhat, and he leaned heavily upon his stout staff. His hands and face were begrimed with dust, and this, added to a stiff, bristling beard of several days’ growth, helped to complete the picture.
“Hold, vagabundo! what are you doing here?” challenged the voice of a concealed man, and the wayfarer’s ears were saluted by a significant click, so suggestive of an ounce of lead, as he suddenly paused and exclaimed: