“Not he!” answered Reyes. “He has a new patroness; Doña Isabel herself is with him.”
“Isabel!” cried the officer with an oath. “Ah, then, Tres Hermanos is partisan at last! Carrhi! my lady Isabel shall find what she has begun shall be soon ended!” He put a small silver whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast, which was answered by a neigh. A black horse lifted its head and looked over the wall with a gaze of almost human intelligence.
“He followed me at a word,” exclaimed Reyes, “and stood by the wall like a statue when I bade him. Never was there such another horse as your black Choolooke, my General. Even the stampede of that unbroken brute that was tethered here could not startle him.”
“Ay, I discipline horses better than I do men,—eh, Choolooke?” The horse with its jingling accoutrements had cantered into the enclosure, and with one bound his owner was in the saddle.
All had passed in the few minutes in which Ashley was recovering breath, and in utter bewilderment endeavoring to gain some insight into the meaning of this rapid transformation scene, of which he himself had formed a part. As his late opponent sprang into the saddle, he could have fancied he heard the sound of the bugle, so alert were the man’s movements, so soldierly his bearing. But in the midst of his involuntary admiration he did not forget the extraordinary relations in which they stood to each other. He threw himself before the horse at the imminent risk of being trampled down. “Your name!” he cried. “By your own admission you are my cousin’s murderer. We must meet again! I am Ashley Ward; and you?”
“Out of the way!” cried the rider, checking his horse by a dexterous turn of his hand. “My name? Ah, yes! Tell them there,” and he nodded in the direction of the hacienda, “they will soon have reason never to forget it!” He hesitated; plunged the spurs into his already impatient steed, and dashed furiously away, followed by Reyes; then rose in his stirrups to shout back in defiance the name—“Ramirez!”
XXXI.
Ramirez! Ashley’s heart bounded, his brain throbbed dizzily yet acutely. Here was no obscure assassin, who once escaping him would perhaps be lost forever.
The name was on every lip with those of Juarez, Ortega, Degollado, Miramon, and a score of other popular chieftains who of one party or another, or of independent factions, attracted to themselves a host of followers, more by their own personal magnetism than for the sake of any principles they represented. In that time of anarchy any head that rose above the common herd led enthusiastic multitudes, who followed a nod and applauded to the echo even one deed of daring. But Ramirez held his prestige by no such recent and uncertain tenure; throughout the long years of revolution he had been a central figure in the bloody drama. Even his recent defeat at El Toro and his subsequent disappearance had added but a fresh glamor of mystery to his adventurous career, without detracting from the almost superstitious awe with which he was regarded. It was believed that he would reappear when and where least expected. Ashley Ward had smiled covertly at the strange and daring escapades attributed to this man. He had become in his mind a figure of romance; and here in the broad day he had risen before him, the self-denounced murderer of John Ashley,—and as suddenly as he had come, so had he escaped him.
Thinking no more of the cross, which had fallen upon the ground, hiding beneath it the name that had been so long preserved for so strange a purpose, Ashley Ward turned from the sunken graves and striding across the mounds, scarred and broken by the sacrilegious tread of the horses’ feet, stood for a moment upon the broken wall, scanning the country in his excitement for some sign of the desperate men who but a few moments before had urged their restive steeds up the steep path and disappeared over the crest of the hill. He saw his own recreant steed galloping toward the hacienda walls, keeping the high-road, on past the reduction-works and the long stretch of open country beyond, and plunging and rearing at the fatal mesquite-tree. The superstitious vaqueros had instinctively imbued their animals with the same irrational terrors in which they had themselves been trained. Yet no sight of ghost or smell of blood lingered there to rouse memory or vengeance. Their waiting-place had been that long-forgotten grave upon the desolate hillside.