Chinita looked unconvinced. In spite of doubts, she had had a certain pride and solace in the belief that Ruiz would prove true to Ramirez,—true through his love for her. She had purposely left him ignorant of the change in her own views and feelings in regard to Ramirez that he might be free to act upon his own impulses and convictions. She knew not what she would have had him do, yet all the same he had disappointed her. She had no clews to the motives of Ruiz, other than those Dolores suggested to her, and there was an uncertainty and vagueness overhanging him which made him in her eyes a victim to his love for her, and a fresh cause for accusation of the man who seemed destined utterly to bereave and despoil her. Strangely enough, in her wildest excitement Chinita had never formulated for herself any definite mode of action when she should see Ramirez,—as see him, accuse, defy him she would! There had been a conviction in her mind that in her the ghosts of the innocent he had slain, the shame,—which with strange perversity he had shrunk from when it menaced his family pride in the person of Herlinda Garcia,—the contempt and hatred of his wronged sister, would all rise to confront and overwhelm him. That which should follow, time, circumstance would determine; but that the wild fever of her passion would be satisfied she would not doubt. She had longed with an ever increasing excitement to find herself before Ramirez, and to pour forth her wrongs in burning words. Yet this woman Dolores, with a fascination even greater than the unconscious one that Ramirez himself had exerted over her, had withheld her from her purpose, had even led her to gain the secrets of the chieftain’s plans from his most trusted confidants,—the young girl reddened with shame and anger, yet with flattered vanity, when she remembered that the sight of her beauty had been more potent than the gold of Dolores. Chinita had not guessed that she had been purposely employed to act the part of a spy, and had resented deeply the fact that her discoveries had more than once been transmitted to Gonzales, and that her revenge was supposed to be gratified by the consequent defeat which had overcome Ramirez. Her longing was for a more dramatic, more direct revenge. Pedro and Dolores could plot and scheme for the silent overthrow of him who had wronged them; they gloried in their astuteness that made him an unsuspicious victim, while Chinita writhed under it, and only the promise that in Las Parras she should accuse Ramirez face to face had made endurable to her the life of secret intrigue and absolute disguise and constant change that she had led for weeks. The element of peril, it is true, had stimulated her adventurous spirit; but she would fain have been in the midst, not hovering a ready fugitive upon the edge of the fray.
When weeks before Chinita had, after her faintness, opened her eyes in the low, rocky cave in which Pedro lay, it had been to find him an almost unrecognizable mass of wounds and bruises, lying on a sheepskin pallet, gazing at her with wide-distended eyes, and ejaculating in tones of dismay, mingled with incredulous delight, “What have I done? Oh God! is it possible that she has come to me,—the miserable, dying Pedro?”
“Yes, yes, Pedro, I am here!” she cried,[cried,] staggering to her feet. “Ah, the American thought I had forgotten thee; but thou wert in my heart all the time that he talked. Ah, though I am of other blood, it is thou that hast saved me! They would have thrust me out to die. I will cling to thee while thou livest; I will avenge thee when thou diest!”
“Hush!” muttered Pedro faintly, as she stooped and kissed his hand, bedewing it with her tears. “Ah, I shall not die, now you have come. Did I not tell you,” he asked, turning to a figure beside Chinita, “that I should live if I could know she loved me?”
“And this is the girl you have nurtured?” asked the stifled voice of a woman. She was not as tall as Chinita, and she held a candle up close to the face of the girl to look at her. Chinita was spent with fatigue; moreover there were tears on her face, and she resented the inspection, pushing away the woman’s hand rudely. Yet it was not that of a servant, nor of a woman of the lower class. Even in the excitement of the moment Chinita was conscious of wondering who and what this person was. How came she there in the cave among these fugitives?
“But for her I should have been dead already,” Pedro was saying. “She has wondrous skill and knowledge of surgery and herbs. But,” he added, in a low, apologetic voice, “she knows all. I have talked in my delirium. I could not help it. You will pardon me,—if I die you will pardon me?”
“I have nothing to pardon!” cried Chinita. “What! you think because my mother lives I would hide her name? No, no! I have endured enough for her cowardice and the shame of Doña Isabel. No, no! let me but see Ramirez,—this Leon Vallé,—and though it be before all the world, I will declare who I am. The American, Ashley Ward, says he will claim me as his cousin. Pepé must ride and tell him I am here, and we will have vengeance together for the cruel deeds of Ramirez. You shall be avenged, Pedro, you shall be avenged!”
The sick man’s eyes glistened. As she spoke, Chinita’s face had glowed with an unrelenting and cruel intensity of purpose. The woman at her side had never once removed her eyes from her. No one was noticing her; had they done so, they would have beheld an extraordinary series of changes pass over her dark but mobile face,—suspicion, delight, doubt, alarm, conviction. Suddenly she seized Chinita’s hand, and pressed it to her heart; it was beating so tumultuously that the young girl drew back startled. The woman thrust her hands under the loose folds of the black kerchief that draped her head with a sombre yet Oriental grace, then withdrawing them caught a stray lock of Chinita’s hair, and burst into a long, low, triumphant laugh.
Chinita drew herself away, alarmed and offended. Pepé had come in; and looking at her anxiously he said, “Nina, do not mind her. Esteban tells me she is a mad woman; yet she does no harm. She does not know what she talks of, and one moment denies what she has said at another. It would not be strange if she should tell you some dreadful tale, and afterward laugh, and say grief had made her mad!”
“And so it has,” cried the woman. “Ah yes, I have been mad; but that is past. Yes, yes. Life of my soul,” turning to Chinita, “how beautiful thou art! And the hair, it is a miracle! In all the world there should be no other with such hair. Thou hast had good fortune, Pedro, to bring up such a child. She is an angel. Ah, it is as if I had seen her all my life! And thou hast a spirit to match thy face,” she added turning again to Chinita. “Thou canst not brook a wrong. Well, well! we will make common cause; and some day—soon, soon we will stand together before Leon Vallé with such a tale, such a revenge, that even he will sink before it. To think that after all these years, I shall turn against him the dagger with which he has pierced me!”