“Of course. But I don’t believe you will learn any thing,” and he smiled in a significant manner. “It has been so long since, you know.”
“True, I can but hope for the best.”
“But your name?” added the padre.
“Is Garote Ventura.”
“Good. When you have questioned the men, come to me, and I will fit you out as a worthy Jarocho should be,” added the padre.
“If I do not learn of my brother,” answered Garote, with a bow.
“True; if,” smiled the monk, as he turned away to his couch, while the other pursued his inquiries regarding the lost one with a praiseworthy industry.
He did hear of Tomas Ventura, and if a tithe was true that was told him, then his brother must have been a wonderful man, surely. Every Jarocho appeared to recollect him, told tragic anecdotes in which he was the hero, but all coincided that he was dead; the only point, however, upon which they were agreed.
He was killed by a knife, gun, a fall from his horse, drowned, hung, by falling over the cliff, drank himself to death; and one Jarocho even affirmed that upon one night he saw the devil place the poor fellow astride of his tail, bidding him hold fast around his body, and then fly through the air, riding upon a streak of chain lightning. Oh, yes, he was dead of a surety, and so at length Garote Ventura returned to the padre, and announced his intention of becoming one of his band of worthies, which resolve was warmly commended, and the holy father ordered a general carousal in honor of the new recruit.
As a preliminary, the new member was sent with a score of others to Manterial, a little hamlet some few miles distant, with orders to procure all the wine, brandy, and liquor that they could carry, and if the owners demanded pay, to settle the score with a cortante or cuchillo, by which proceeding he considered the novice would be perfectly initiated into the mysteries of their craft.