Chinita started. Ward anticipated some outburst of emotion, but the glance she flashed back at him indicated simply keen intelligence; the springs of feeling remained untouched. With an effort Ward continued:—
“My recreant servant had returned. It was Stefano, whom you know well. He is a coward, but ready in resource, and with a kindly heart. He knew the country well, and told us of a cave he once had slept in, and led us to it unerringly. To our surprise we found there a scanty supply of toasted corn, left by some wandering tenant, and a quantity of water, still fresh enough to show that the cave had not long been empty. There was a remnant of a woman’s dress in one corner,—heaven knows how brought there,—and this we used to bind the pistol wound; while Stefano used the best means available in setting the broken arm. These rancheros are possessed of strange accomplishments,—I don’t believe a surgeon could have done it with more skill.
“During the course of our passage through the dusk, bearing as best we could our groaning burden, Pedro’s hallucination that I was John Ashley merged into recognition. It was but little I could do for him, but it filled him with gratitude. ‘You are a good Christian,’ he ejaculated again and again; and once in the night, when the others slept, he muttered ‘Niña, niña Herlinda, forgive me! I am dying. You bade me protect the child! Ah, even in life it has not been possible! Is she not in the hands you bade me defend her from?’
“These sentences, murmured at intervals, kept me waking while all others slept, hanging over him with entreaties to disburden his mind of the secret which weighed so heavily upon him that it seemed under it he could neither live nor die.
“‘Tell me at least,’ I said, ‘who is this man called Ramirez, whom I saw this evening wreak upon you so terrible a revenge? How comes it that you are so hated by the man for whom your foster-daughter is plotting? Have you not been his follower in by-gone days? Surely it is not Chinita who has set such enmity between you!’
“‘No, no! it began before she was born,’ answered Pedro shudderingly, his pale countenance becoming more ghastly still. ‘Oh, Lady of Sorrows!’ he continued, as if forgetful of my presence, ‘was it not enough that the child should fall again into the power of Doña Isabel,—she who tore it from its mother’s breast to cast it among the beggars who feed with the dogs at her gates,—but that her father’s murderer, her mother’s destroyer, should wield this devil’s witchcraft over her? My God, who will defend her? Who will rescue her?’”
Chinita raised her head, her nostrils quivering, the veins upon her neck and temples swollen and palpitating.
“‘Tell her the truth,’ I said! ‘Then she will be her own defender; and I—you know me; for what other purpose am I here but to shield her? Yes, Pedro, the secret you have kept so long is mine as well as yours. John Ashley, my cousin, died because he dared love a woman named Herlinda; and that Herlinda was the daughter of Doña Isabel Garcia.’” A look of indescribable[indescribable] hauteur and triumph passed over Chinita’s rigid face, while Ashley continued,—
“Pedro stared at me in wild dismay, ‘Niña, niña!’ he muttered, piteously, ‘I have not betrayed thee; and Doña Isabel, though you have taken the child from me which you thrust upon me in such mockery, have I not borne the torture meekly? No, even to this man, so like the other that he needed not to tell his name and kin, I have told nothing to shame you!’
“His words sprang from his lips in spite of the will that would have kept them back; for a time he was like a man under the influence of a maddening draught. Striving to calm him by the assurance that I would never use the knowledge he might give me to dishonor the family to which his whole life had been devoted, I drew from him little by little his strange tale. It concerns neither you nor me, Chinita, until in recompense for secret service done her in the cause of her wretched brother Leon, Doña Isabel Garcia made Pedro gate-keeper at Tres Hermanos. There my unfortunate cousin gained his good offices in his secret meetings with the young Herlinda. The man seems in truth to have been conscious of no serious offence against Doña Isabel in lending his aid to the tender intercourse of the young lovers, although he was cognizant of her plans regarding the marriage of Herlinda and Gonzales. My cousin claimed the right to visit his wife; and Pedro took his gold and was silent, if not convinced.