“Have no anxiety, Señor,” answered the man with his old sullenness. “And I swear to you, Niña, she is safe, quite safe. She is with a woman who can guard her well. She is gone to seek the man who murdered her father. Ah, Niña, your daughter has the blood of the Garcia; she will avenge you!”
Herlinda sank with a moan. Ashley would have raised her, but Gonzales motioned him back. There was a house at a little distance where a widow and her daughters dwelt, and thither he bore her.
It was then at the middle hour between midnight and dawn; and long before light, after a hurried consultation, the three men met again before the widow’s door. All arrangements had been made for the brief transfer of the command of the troops. Gonzales, Ashley, and Pedro acted as outriders for a strong military coach drawn by four fleet mules. Into this stepped Herlinda and the widow, both dressed as respectable gentlewomen; and before the people of El Toro wakened from their deep sleep that followed the excitement of the early night, the travellers were far upon the road, and though the way was long and rough were gaining fast upon the diligence which bore Doña Isabel, her daughter, and Chata.
XLV.
On the evening when Doña Isabel and her companions set forth from the village upon their toilsome pilgrimage to Las Parras, two women leaned against the gate-posts at the entrance to the garden where the mistress of Tres Hermanos and the mother of the administrador had parted so many years before, and looked wearily along the silent road. One would not have been surprised to hear that during all these years no other mortal had approached the place, for the air of neglect it had worn then had deepened into that of utter abandonment. It looked not merely disused, but actually shunned. The gate had fallen from its hinges and lay broken upon the rank coarse grass and weeds, which thrusting themselves between the bars filled the paths. Thick clumps of cacti and stunted uncultivated fruit and flowers, with manzanita and other common shrubs of the country, had outgrown and outrooted the feebler growths, and almost hid the low front of the solid but dismantled building, upon which the iron-ribbed shutters hung forlornly like broken armor on a battered image.
The sun and wind and rains had done their work unchecked in all these years, aided by the revolution, which had torn and scathed whatever had attracted its greedy hand and then passed on, leaving desolation to continue or repair the work of destruction. The vines, which had at first served as a graceful drapery, hung so heavily on every porch and wooden projection of the house that they had broken down the frail supports, and added to the general appearance of riot and disorder; while their matted masses offered a defiant obstruction to any adventurous comer. Yet these women had forced a way into the dark and mouldy rooms, and found a certain pleasure and security in their seemingly impenetrable and forbidding aspect.
“We have been here three days,” said the younger, who even in the declining light one might see was a mere girl, while her companion, though small, was old in face and figure,—not with the dignity of actual age, but with a sort of lithe grace and abandon, which comes from years of free and careless action. “We have been three days waiting, yet he has not come! You may be mistaken. How can you reckon upon what a man like Ramirez will do? He is not like a blind man, always led by his dog upon the same round.”
“Necessity and habit are the dogs that lead him,” said the woman with a slight laugh. “Fortune is against him; he has been beaten from every stronghold. I know this is the hole he will creep into at last.”
“And the people here, they would save him?” said Chinita, musingly. “He has ever spared them, ever protected them, that he might have a safe refuge in time of need. Here, here, but for us he would be safe?—but for us, Dolores?”
“Ah, he is not the first who does not find even nests where he hoped to find birds,” answered the woman called Dolores. “To-day he is laughing at the little troop of Liberals patrolling these hills; he will make a way between them. Yes, you will see; here, here, upon this very road, we shall see him flash by like a meteor, and then be lost. But my eyes can trace him; my hand will be able to point the way he has gone.”