Feliz smiled. “What, that Indian?” she said. “It is a new thing for a gentleman of pure Spanish blood to choose such a leader. Ah, Vicente, you disappoint me! It must be this Ramirez, who has in his every movement the air of a guerilla, a free-fighter, who has infected you.”
“No,” answered Vicente, sullenly, “Ramirez has no influence over me; only the fortune of war has thrown us together,—a blustering fellow on the surface, but so deep, so astute, that none can fathom him. He is not the man I could make my friend.”
“Where does he come from?” asked Doña Feliz with interest. “There is something familiar to me in his voice or expression.”
“A mere fancy on your part,” answered Vicente; “just such a fancy as makes me glance at him sometimes as he rides silent at my side, and with a sudden start clap my hand upon my sword. I have an instinctive dread of him,—not a fear, but such a dread as I have of a deadly reptile. I wonder,” he added gloomily, “if it is to be my fate to take his life.”
Feliz shuddered. Chinita’s eyes flashed.
“And yet once I saved him, when we were fighting against the guerillas of Ortiz. He was caught in a defile of the mountains; four assailants dashed upon him at once with exultant cries; and though he fought gallantly, had I not rushed to the rescue he must have been killed there. Together we beat the villains off, and he fancies he owes me some thanks; and perhaps too I have some kindness for the man I saved,—and yet there are times when I cannot trust myself to look upon him.”
“Strange! strange indeed!” said Doña Feliz, musingly. “I have heard his name before. Is he not the man who stopped the train of wagons by which the merchants of Guanapila were despatching funds to make their foreign payments, and who took fifty thousand dollars or more to pay his troops?”
“The same,” answered Vicente; “and those troops were reinforced by a chain-gang he had released the day before,—vile miscreants every one. We quarrelled over each of these acts; but he laughed us all—the merchants, the government, myself—into good-humor again. He is one of those anomalies one detests, and admires,—crafty, daring, licentious, superstitious, yielding, cruel, all in turn and when least expected. He will rob a city with one hand, and feed the poor or enrich a church with the other. But here he comes!”
The man thus spoken of was, indeed, crossing the court with Don Rafael, who seemed to reel slightly in his walk, and was laughing and talking volubly. “Yes, yes,” he was saying, as he came within hearing, “you are right, Señor Don José; the herd of brood mares of Tres Hermanos is the finest in the country. There are more than a hundred well-broken horses in the pasture, besides scores upon scores that no man has crossed. I sent a hundred and fifty to Don Julian a month ago. Doña Isabel begrudges nothing to the cause of liberty.”
“Then I will take the other hundred to-morrow,” said Ramirez, lightly. Don Rafael stared at him blankly. There was something in the General’s face that almost sobered him. The countenance of Gonzales darkened.