“Ah!” he exclaimed, with an oath, “I know thee! Thou art Pedro Gomez.”
Pedro, who till this moment had bent his head to avoid the gaze of his captors, raised it swiftly with an ejaculation of amazement. A red handkerchief bound the brows of Ramirez; his face was swarthy and grimed with hard riding.
“Ah, and thou knowest me, too!” Ramirez cried. “Thou hast called me a devil more than once in thy lifetime; and now I will prove thy word true. Hereafter thou wilt have no further chance for that, or for opening the gate to the man who would make my—” He gnashed his teeth in speechless rage, and with his sword struck the keeper across the face.
The action spoke louder than words. Some one, in ready comprehension of the leader’s mood, threw a lasso, and catching the prisoner across the breast began to mimic the wild shouts of a bull-fighter. But Ramirez was in no humor for pastime.
“On! on!” he cried. “’T is nearly sunset. Let us see how far on our way this fellow can accompany us till then; and then by a vow I made to my patron San Leonidas, more than a score of years ago, he shall die. Caramba! did ever man play Ramirez false, and he forget to pay him his dues?”
Pepé, amid the shouts and laughter of the band, heard these words with a wild sense of terror; but it was only when he beheld Pedro struggling at the side of the plunging horse, that he realized that the gate-keeper was to be dragged to his death. He had heard of Ramirez’s wild jests, and imagined that this might be one, until he beheld the cortège speeding forward, urging the unhappy Pedro before them with blows and jeers, or exhibiting their wonderful horsemanship in evading his prostrate body,—which, however, more than once, as he fell, sounded under the thud of the horses’ feet.
Pepé could have escaped at any moment, for in the concentration of attention upon Pedro his companion had been utterly forgotten; but he followed madly, expostulating, entreating, cursing, while his breath allowed; and then was swept onward in the whirl, seemingly almost unconscious, till he heard the shot that ended the mad scene, and found himself staggering over the body of the bleeding Pedro.
The sight of Ashley, as unexpected as it was reassuring, as though an angel had arisen, saved the wretched youth from utter collapse of mind and body. But for the new excitement he would have fallen prone, and had he ever regained consciousness it would have been to find his comrade dead. But under the impulse of Ashley’s energetic action and sustaining words, he even helped to raise the victim, in whom, lacerated though he was, Ashley soon discovered a feeble flutter of the heart.
“We took him to the shelter of the rock,” said Ashley, who had by signs hastened Pepé’s conclusion of the account, which, related in his own profuse manner, was far more agonizing than the brief outline here given, “and found that his extraordinary powers of endurance, though strained to the uttermost, had stood him in wonderful stead. An arm was broken, and every muscle so wrenched and strained that when he regained his consciousness the resolute will, which during the progress of the torture had withheld him from uttering protest or groan, utterly gave way, and he screamed in agony. Happily his persecutors were too far distant to be recalled by those unrestrainable cries of returning consciousness. Even while we poured brandy down his throat, and rubbed and stretched his limbs, it seemed as though it would have been a thousand times more charitable to suffer him to die than to recall him to such agony. When he regained full consciousness, however, the cries ceased,—not because the pain was less, but that the will regained its mastery. “As his eyes fell upon me, he gazed at me a moment as upon an apparition. So wild was his look, I thought he was going mad.
“‘Don Juan! here! here!’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘Are we in hell together? But, no!’ he sprang up, then fell back with a groan. ‘I shall live to warn her yet. Oh God, that the child should entreat me to turn traitor for him! But she shall not fall into his accursed hands. Never! never! Ah, Pepé, thou art here; hasten, hasten! tell her she is the child of John Ashley, the man Ramirez murdered. What though I die? She will be saved! Go! go! I pray you!’”[you!’”]