Chapter Fifty Eight.
Va Con Dios.
In a rush Aguara goes, fast as his animal can be urged by heel and voice. For, while so roughly separating the two girls, these had shouted in alarm, and his ear had caught other cries raised at a distance, and as if responsive. Now he hears them again; men’s voices, and mingling with them the trampling of hoofs—clearly several horses coming on in a gallop. She, he has in his arms, hears them too, but listens not in silence or unresisting. Instead, she struggles and shrieks, calling “Help, help!” with the names “Ludwig, Cypriano, Gaspar!”
She is heard by all three; for it is they who responded to the cries of herself and Nacena, knowing who gave utterance to them. Near they are now, and riding as in a race; they, too, pressing their horses to utmost speed. But the darkness is against them, as their ignorance of the ground, with which the man pursued is familiar. By this, at every step, they are obstructed; and but for the screams of Francesca, still continued, might as well abandon the chase for any chance they have of overtaking him.
And overtake him they never would, nor could, were fortune not in their favour. An accident it may appear; at the same time seeming a divine retribution for wrong—a very Nemesis in the path of the wicked Aguara. On returning past the spot where he had struck down Shebotha’s slave, he sees the unfortunate man stretched along the ground, and, to all appearance, still insensible. Nought cares he for that, but his horse does; and, at sight of the prostrate form, the animal, with a snort of affright, shies to one side, and strikes off in a new direction. Going at so swift a pace, and in such a dim light, in a few bounds it enters among some bushes, where it is brought up standing. Before its rider can extricate it, a strong hand has hold of it by the head, with a thumb inserted into its nostrils, while the fingers of another are clutching at his own throat. The hand on the horse’s muzzle is that of Caspar the gaucho, the fingers that grope to get a gripe on the rider’s neck being those of Cypriano.
It is a crisis in the life of the young Tovas cacique, threatening either death or captivity. But subtle as all Indians are, and base as any common fellow of his tribe, instead of showing a bold front, he eludes both, by letting go the captive girl, himself slipping to the ground, and, snake like, gliding off among the bushes.
On the other side of his horse, which he has also abandoned, Francesca falls into the arms of her brother, who embraces her with wild delight. Though not wilder, nor half so thrilling, as that which enraptures the ear of Cypriano—to whose arms she is on the instant after transferred.
But it is not a time for embraces, however affectionate, nor words to be wasted in congratulation. So Gaspar tells them, while urging instant departure from that perilous spot.
“Our lucky star’s gone up again,” he says, with a significant nod to Aguara’s horse, which he has still hold of. “There is now four of us; and as I take it this brisk little musteño is fairly our property, there’ll be no need for any of us riding double—to say nothing of one having a witch behind his back. Without such incumbrance, it’ll be so much the better for the saving of time; which at this present moment presses, with not the hundredth part of a second to spare. So hijos mios, and you, hija mia querida, let us mount and be off!”