Soon she is far enough beyond to give them an opportunity of exchanging speech without her overhearing it; and of this the gaucho avails himself, whispering—
“She’s keeping an appointment with her lover, I suppose.”
He little thinks of the painful effect his words have produced upon Ludwig, as he adds—
“We’ll do best to let her go on to their place of meeting, which is no doubt somewhere near. She must return this way, and then we can have our interview with her. But where’s the amanté! A laggard, to let the girl be on the ground before him! That wasn’t my way, when— See! she’s coming to a stop.”
And to a stop she comes, just where the sloping path passes out at the upper end of the defile, entering among the scaffolds. There standing erect, she glances inquiringly around, her gaze ranging along the open spaces between the structures and the shadows underneath them.
For a minute or two she remains in this attitude, without changing it, or making the slightest noise—evidently looking for a form or listening for a footstep. But neither seeing the one, nor hearing the other, she at length calls out a name; at first timidly, but after an interval in bolder tone, “Shebotha!”
“Not her lover after all!” mutters Gaspar, who remembers the name thus pronounced, while Ludwig is relieved at hearing it, he also knowing something of the sorceress.
“Only that old hag!” the gaucho goes on; “I wonder now what the young sprout can be wanting with her, up here and at this hour of the night! Some mischief between them, I haven’t a doubt.”
His conjectures are suddenly brought to a close by a new noise now reaching their ears; a sort of scraping or shuffling, diversified by grunts and coughs—all coming up from below. Turning their eyes that way, they see ascending what appears to be a human figure, but stooped forward so as more to resemble a creature crawling on all fours. At the same instant the Indian girl has caught sight of it; and standing poised on the platform’s edge, she silently awaits its approach, knowing the bent form to be Shebotha’s.
Scrambling on up the steep, at intervals stopping to take breath, while she intermittently gives out hoarse grunts, the hag passes by them, at length reaching the spot where the girl stands awaiting her. Stopping by the side of the latter, both are now seen face to face in the full moonlight; and never did moon shine upon faces or figures more contrasting. On the one side age indicated by a spare body, thin skinny arms, features furrowed with wrinkles, of most repulsive aspect, and eyes sparkling with a sinister light; on the other, youth, with all its witching charms, a figure lithe and graceful as any palm growing on the plain below, features of classic type, and a face exquisitely beautiful, despite its tint of bronze, the eyes bright with the glow of a burning passion. For it is this last that has brought the girl thither.