XXI.
Leon Vallé had not parted from his sister in declared hostility, yet months passed before she heard directly from him. But this was not to be wondered at, as letters were necessarily sent by private carriers, and it was not to be expected that in the adventurous excitement of his life he should pause to send a mere salutation over leagues of desolate country.
Meanwhile the prevailing anarchy of the time crept closer and closer to the hacienda limits. Bandits gathered in the mountains and ravaged the outlying villages, driving off flocks of sheep or herds of cattle, lassoing the finest horses, and mocking the futile efforts of the country people to guard their property. The name of one Juan Planillos became a terror in every household; yet one by one the younger men stole away to strengthen the number of his followers and share the wild excitement of the bandit life, rather than to wait patiently at home to be drafted into the ranks of some political chieftain whose career raised little enthusiasm, and whose political creed was as obscure as his origin. “The memory is confused,” says an historian, “by the plans and pronunciamientos of that time. Men changed ideas at each step, and defended to-day what they had attacked yesterday. Parties triumphed and fell at every turn.” The form of government was as changeable as a kaleidoscope, and only the brigand and guerilla seemed immutable. Whatever the politics of the day, their motto was plunder and rapine; and their deeds, so brilliant, so unforeseeable, offered an irresistible attraction to the restless spirits of that revolutionary epoch.
Though Doña Isabel Garcia, like all others, was imbued with the military ardor of the time, the brilliant reputation that her brother was winning in distant fields, though in harmony with her own political opinions, horrified rather than dazzled her. She shuddered as she heard his name mentioned in the same breath with that of the remorseless Valdez, or the crafty and bloody Planillos; yet she was glad to believe his incentive was patriotism rather than plunder, and when at last a messenger from him reached her with the same old cry for “Money! money! money!” she responded with a heaping handful of gold,—all she had been able to accumulate in the few months of his absence. Don Gregorio however, vexed by recent losses and harassed by constant raids from the mountain brigands, sent a refusal that was worded almost like a curse; and ashamed of her brother, annoyed by and yet sympathizing with her husband, Doña Isabel felt her heart sink like lead in her bosom, and for the first time her superb health showed signs of yielding to the severe mental strain to which she had been so long subjected.
June had come again; the rainy season would soon begin, and Don Gregorio, suddenly thinking that the change would benefit his wife, suggested that they should pass some months in the city. The roads were threatened by highwaymen, yet Isabel was glad to go, and even to incur the novelty of danger. Her travelling carriage was luxurious, and with her little girls immediately under her own eye, with an occasional glimpse of the four-year-old Norberto riding proudly at his father’s side in the midst of the numerous escort of picked men, she felt an exhilaration both of body and mind to which she had long been a stranger.
The travelling was necessarily slow, for the roads were excessively rough, and the party had at sunset of the first day scarcely left the limits of the hacienda and entered the defile which led to the deeper cañons of the mountains, wherein upon the morrow they anticipated the necessity of exercising a double vigilance. Not a creature had been seen for hours; the mountains with their straggling clumps of cacti and blackened, stunted palms seemed absolutely bereft of animal life, except when occasionally a lizard glided swiftly over a rock, or a snake rustled through the dry and crackling herbage. Caution seemed absurd in such a place where there was scarce a cleft for concealment, yet the party drew nearer together, and the men looked to their arms as the cliffs became closer on either side and so precipitous that it seemed as though a goat could scarcely have scaled them.
They had passed nearly the entire length of this cañon, and the nervous tension that had held the whole party silent and upon the alert was gradually yielding to the glimpse of more open country which lay beyond, and on which they had planned to camp for the night, when suddenly the whole country seemed alive with men. They blocked the way, backward and forward; they hung from the cliffs; they bounded from rock to rock, on foot and on horse, the horses as agile as the men. Amid the tumult one man seemed ubiquitous. All eyes followed him, yet not one caught sight of his face; the striped jorongo thrown over shoulders and face formed an impenetrable disguise, such as the noted guerilla chief of the mountains was wont to wear. Suddenly there was a cry of “Planillos! Planillos!” amid the confusion of angry voices, of curses, and the clanking of sabres and echo of pistol-shots. Don Gregorio found himself driven against the rocks, a sword-point at his throat, a pistol pressed to his temple, his own smoking weapon in his hand.
Immediately the shouts ceased, and before the smoke which had filled the gorge had cleared, the travellers found themselves alone, with two or three dead men obstructing the road. Don Gregorio had barely time to notice them, or the blank faces of his men staring bewildered at one another, when a cry from Doña Isabel recalled him to his senses, and he saw her rushing wildly from group to group. In an instant he was at her side. “Norberto! where is Norberto?” both demanded wildly, and some of the men who had caught the name began to force their horses up the almost inaccessible cliffs, and to gallop up or down the cañon in a confused pursuit of the vanished enemy.
Don Gregorio alone retained his presence of mind; though night was closing in and the horses were wearied by a day’s travel, not a moment was lost in dispatching couriers to the city for armed police and to the hacienda for fresh men and horses, and the return to Tres Hermanos was immediately begun. Sometime during the morning hours they were met by a party from the hacienda, and putting himself at the head of his retainers Don Gregorio led them in search of his son, while Doña Isabel in a state bordering upon distraction proceeded to her desolated home.
Her first act was to send a courier to her brother. No one knew the mountains as he did, and in her terrible plight she was certain he would not fail her. But her haste was needless, for information reached him from some other source, and within a few days he was at the head of a party of valiant Garcias, who had hastened from far and near to the rescue of their young kinsman.