“Then you wish to join Vicente Gonzales? They say he, with all his band, has thrown his fortunes in with those of Juarez. Well, well, perhaps anything was better than that he should be linked with Ramirez. If Vicente[Vicente] is a traitor, it is at least with a noble aim, not for mere plunder. There was something strange, forbidding, terrible, about that man Ramirez. Did you notice his face, Pedro, when he was here?”
Pedro shook his head, returning with pertinacity to his own plans. “You will talk to Don Rafael for me, will you not, Señora?” he said, with a trace of the abject whine in his tone that marked the habit of serfdom, which a few years of nominal freedom had done little to alter, “and with your good leave I will go, and take Chinita with me.” He spoke hesitatingly, as though fearful his right would be disputed.
“Take Chinita!” exclaimed Doña Feliz. “What, to a soldiers’ camp, to her ruin! You are mad, Pedro. No, she shall remain here with me. I will take her into the house. I will teach her to sew. She shall be my child rather than my servant! I—” she stopped in extreme agitation, for within the doorway the child stood.
“I will be no one’s servant!” she said, proudly drawing herself up; “and as to going to the Indian’s camp—ah, I know a better place than that,” and she nodded her head significantly. “You shall leave me, Father Pedro, with your Doña Isabel!”
Doña Feliz and Pedro started as if they had been shot.
“I came to tell you she is coming,” continued the child. “I was out beyond the granaries, letting my fawn browse on the little hill, and as I was looking toward the gorge I saw a horseman coming, and far behind him was a carriage and many men. Is all ready?” and she glanced around her with the air of a prophetess. “Hark! the courier is in the court now. Doña Isabel will not be long behind him.”
Pedro hastened from the room with an exclamation of alarmed amazement. “Go, go!” cried Feliz. “You are too late!” for she knew in her heart that it was in very fear of this visit, and to remove the child from the chance of encountering Doña Isabel, that Pedro had proposed to leave the hacienda; and here was Doña Isabel herself,—for strangely enough, neither of them doubted that what the child had assumed was true. The thoughts of Doña Feliz were inexplicable even to herself. She felt as though she was placed in some vast and gloomy theatre, with the curtain about to rise upon some strange play, which at the will of the actors might become either comedy or tragedy. Though of late she had felt certain that Doña Isabel would return to the hacienda, that very act seemed dramatic, the precursor of inevitable complications.
“Why could she not be content in the new life she had chosen?” muttered Doña Feliz. “What voice has been sounding in her ears, to call her back to resurrect old griefs, to walk among the spectres of long-silent agonies and shame? Foolish, foolish woman! Yet as the magnet attracts iron, so thy hard heart is drawn by these bitter remembrances. Go, go! thou child!” she exclaimed aloud, and almost angrily. “Doña Isabel would be vexed to see thee in her room. Go, and keep thee out of her way!” She gazed after Chinita with a look of perplexity and pain, as with a bound of irresistible excitement the girl sprang out upon the corridor, her laugh rising through the still air as if in notes of defiance. “What said the child?” muttered Doña Feliz. “‘Leave me with your Doña Isabel’?”
XVII.
From the city of Guanapila to the hacienda of Tres Hermanos the road runs almost continually through mountain defiles, where on either hand the great masses of bare rocks rise so precipitously that it seems impossible that man or beast should scale them; and here, where Nature’s aspect is most terrible, man is least to be feared. But there are intervals where broad flat ledges hang above the roadway, or where it crosses plateaus shaded by scrub-oak or mesquite and even grassy dells, where after the rains water may be found, offering charming camping-grounds during the noon-tide heat; and precisely at such places the anxious traveller has need to look to his weapons, and picket his horses and mules in such order that no sudden attack may cause a stampede among them, and that they may, if need offer, form a barricade for their defenders. In those lawless times few persons ventured forth without a military escort, and if possible sought additional security by accompanying the baggage trains which by arrangement with the party for the moment in power enjoyed immunity from attack by roving bands of soldiery, and were too formidable to be successfully assailed by the ordinary cliques of highwaymen. Seldom indeed was there found a person so reckless as to venture forth attended only by the escort his own house afforded; and daring indeed was the woman who would undertake a two days’ journey in such a manner. The least she might expect would be to find her protectors dispersed, perhaps slain, and herself a captive,—held for an exorbitant ransom, and subjected to the hardships of life in the remote recesses of the mountains, and to indignities the very report of which might daunt the most reckless or the bravest.