Chata and Chinita: A Novel

by Laura Preston

Ashley leaped from the wall and rapidly began the descent to the valley. The sun was still high in the heavens, for the scene we have recorded had passed in less than a brief quarter of an hour. As he walked on, gradually falling into a more natural pace, the whole matter took definite form and coherence in his mind. That which had been so unexpected, so unnatural, seemed to be the event to which his whole journey to Mexico, all his wanderings, his strange and wearisome experiences, had inevitably and naturally tended. And then arose a point beyond. His work at Tres Hermanos seemed ended; the primal cause of his being there was forgotten. The definite thought now in his mind was to reach the hacienda, provide himself anew with horse, guide, and arms, and follow on the path which Ramirez had chosen, and upon which he would sooner or later re-appear, decoyed by the rich booty that Doña Isabel had intrusted to the weak and presumably faithless Ruiz. Could he reach and warn her in time?

Ashley’s scarce-healed wound was throbbing painfully, the way was long, the heat intense; yet he pressed on resolutely, though at last he staggered as he went. He sat down to rest awhile among the dry rushes of the spent watercourse, under a straggling cottonwood-tree, the few poor leaves of which scarcely sufficed to shade him from the fierce rays of the sun. A fever heat was in his veins; wild theories and speculations passed through his brain,—some of them, perhaps, not far from being keys to the mystery of that tragedy which that day for the first time had become to his mind other than a vague and gloomy fantasy. Now, like the murderer himself, it was real, absorbing, appalling.

The young man rose and again pressed on. After the descent to the long rude wall of the reduction-works, he skirted it slowly, thinking as he went how changed the aspect of the place must be since his cousin had ridden forth to his death. How proudly John had written, and almost vauntingly, of the prosperity his management had inaugurated, of the crowds of laden animals that passed in and out of the wide gates, of the men who led their slow, laborious lives among those primitive mills and wide floors of trodden ores.

Ashley glanced at the great square mass of walls and towers of Tres Hermanos, glistening in the distance. To his weary eye it looked far away; yet doubtless he thought it had been but the ride of a few eager minutes to the lover, as he went at midnight to cast a glance at the walls that circled his mistress, or to rein his horse beneath her window that he might win a word or glance from her who whispered from above. These, Ashley had heard, were lovers’ ways in Mexico; he did not know that no maiden of Tres Hermanos ever occupied one of the few apartments whose windows opened toward the outer air. Yet as he debated the matter with himself, it became more and more probable to him that John Ashley had upon the fatal night been actually within the walls of the hacienda, and been stealthily followed thence by his treacherous rival,—for what, he thought, even to a Spaniard, could justify so foul a murder but the falseness of his mistress, the triumph of a hated rival? Pedro’s taciturnity and gloom Ashley construed as proofs of his complicity in the crime. Even then Ramirez had been a chieftain of renown, and Pedro in his youth had been a soldier, a free rider, of whom strange tales were told. Was it not probable that he had opened the gate at a comrade’s bidding,—or, more likely still, had bidden him wait beneath the tree where the favored lover was wont to mount his horse, and so take him unawares? Ashley remembered that such, it had been said, had been the manner of his cousin’s taking off. He had been slain with the swiftness and sureness of a secret and unhesitating avenger.

The ardent youth railed at the mocking chances that had combined to suffer Ramirez to escape him in the unpremeditated struggle in which they had clinched with a deadly enmity. In such a struggle he could have found himself the victor without remorse, or could have died without regret; but it was not in his nature to follow a man for blood. Yet neither could he shut his ears to that cry for vengeance, for justice, which seemed ringing through the sultry stillness,—the more importunate as the possibilities of their attainment shaped themselves in his mind.

That this must be a personal matter between himself and Ramirez was clear. At any time it would probably have been useless for an alien to have denounced so popular and influential a man as the proud and daring revolucionario. To attempt his arrest for a murder committed years before and probably in rivalry for a lady’s favor, would be but to throw a new mystery about him, and add a fresh legend of romance to those which already made him rather a character of ideal chivalry than of mere vulgar, every-day lawlessness and semi-barbarity. Though the brilliant adventurer was now under a temporary cloud, one threat of attack from law would make him again a popular idol; indeed it was likely that a pronunciamiento in his favor would be the immediate result, and that in falling into his hands the American would lose, if not his life, at least all opportunity either of obtaining the satisfaction of the law for his cousin’s death, or of investigating further those doubts and probabilities which he had forgotten, but which now came upon him with redoubled force.

The excited Ashley planned in his mind to refresh himself upon reaching the hacienda, and demanding horse and guide to set forth upon that very night, hoping to rejoin the force at daybreak. It was useless, he reflected, to waste further time in idle questionings. It was to Doña Isabel herself he would appeal, and warning her of the danger that threatened her from the bandit chieftain, induce her to make common cause with him against one who for years must have been their common enemy. Impossible was it for him to solve the mystery of the relations in which the several actors in this strange drama in which he was so unexpectedly taking part, stood either to one another, or to himself. There was but one fact certain; by that alone he could connect himself with beings who seemed almost of another world,—the one undoubted fact of the discovery of John Ashley’s murderer.

Ashley’s ready apprehension of the public mind had been helped by what he knew to be the actual state of affairs in the ranks to which Doña Isabel had intrusted the safety of her person, trusting to the resources which were at her command, and to the present ascendency of Gonzales, to bind those soldiers of fortune to the cause she had espoused. Perhaps none knew better than she the elements that an alluring chance of gain or a transient enthusiasm had drawn together; but she could not know how near the fire lay to the straw, and how at her very side were those who in the name of patriotism—or, like Chinita, for a personal sentiment as unexplainable as it was imaginative and ardent—would sacrifice her dearest plans, and think it a grand and noble deed to raise the ubiquitous and dashing Ramirez upon the fall of the slow and cautious Gonzales. Ashley had imperfectly comprehended the scheme or its bearings; he had little understood, and felt but little interest in, those strange complexities and personalities of Mexican politics; but now a sudden party zeal and horror of treason seized him. Where was Pedro Gomez, who, having played traitor once, might do so a hundred times more? Where was Pepé? Had he rejoined the troops, or had the detour to the graveyard been but a clever plan for eluding them? Were these, and perhaps Ruiz too, the tools of Ramirez? Yet the latter had appeared to have ridden far; the news of the gathering and departure of the troops had appeared to have astounded as much as it had enraged him. Who had carried the news to Reyes?

The way was long and the youth’s excitement waning; his recent illness and still aching wound began to declare their effects. In his full vigor Ashley Ward would have found the walk under the glaring sunshine—which, though no longer vertical, was fierce and blinding as it neared the western hilltops—more than he would have chosen for an afternoon’s stroll. Weak as he was, and becoming painfully conscious that he had fasted since morning, he was glad to lean sometimes against the high adobe wall and measure with his eye the slowly decreasing distance. It was a landmark on his way when he caught sight of the heavy gate set in the wall of the reduction-works; he knew then just how much farther he must go. He had no thought of actually approaching it, but he noticed with surprise that one heavy valve was slightly ajar; and with that sudden collapse which is apt to assail the overtasked frame at the unexpected sight of an open door, however meagre the entertainment it may suggest, he dragged himself onward with the natural belief that he should find within some servant or attaché of the great house. But when he reached the gate and looked through the narrow aperture, a perfect stillness reigned within. No horse stamped in the courtyard; no spurred heel rang on the pavement. Great cacti were pushing their gaunt and prickly branches into the narrow space, as if stretching longing arms out into the wide world from which they had been so long shut in.

With some effort Ashley thrust back the strong and aggressive barrier, and forced his way in. Rank grass, which was at that season yellow and matted, had grown up between the cobble-stones, and raised them in little heaps, over which the lizards ran. One—fiery red—stopped as Ashley’s boot-heel woke the echoes, and turned a wondering ear, then glided swiftly on.