“You can keep the muchachita at your pleasure,” says Valdez, having, to all appearance, settled certain preliminaries. “All my master wants is, to vindicate the laws of our country, which this man Halberger has outraged. As you know yourself, Señor Aguara, one of our statutes is that no foreigner who marries a Paraguayan woman may take her out of the country without permission of the President—our executive chief. Now this man is not one of our people, but a stranger—a gringo—from far away over the big waters; while the Señora, his wife, is Paraguayan, bred and born. Besides, he stole her away in the night, like a thief, as he is.”
Naraguana would not tamely have listened to such discourse. Instead, the old chief, loyal to his friendship, would have indignantly repelled the allegations against his friend and protégé. As it is, they fall upon the ear of Naraguana’s son without his offering either rebuke or protest.
Still, he seems in doubt as to what answer he should make, or what course he ought to pursue in the business between them.
“What would you have me do, Señor Rufino?” he asks in a patois of Spanish, which many Chaco Indians can speak; himself better than common, from his long and frequent intercourse with Halberger’s family. “What want you?”
“I don’t want you to do anything,” rejoins the vaqueano. “If you’re so squeamish about giving offence to him you call your father’s friend, you needn’t take any part in the matter, or at all compromise yourself. Only stand aside, and allow the law I’ve just spoken of to have fulfilment.”
“But how?”
“Let our President send a party of his soldiers to arrest those runaways, and carry them back whence they came. Now that you’ve proposed to renew the treaty with us, and are hereafter to be our allies—and, I hope, fast friends—it is only just and right you should surrender up those who are our enemies. If you do, I can say, as his trusted representative, that El Supremo will heap favours, and bestow rich presents on the Tovas tribe; above all, on its young cacique—of whom I’ve heard him speak in terms of the highest praise.”
Aguara, a vain young fellow, eagerly drinks in the fulsome flattery, his eyes sparkling with delight at the prospect of the gifts thus promised. For he is as covetous of wealth as he is conceited about his personal appearance.
“But,” he says, thinking of a reservation, “would you want us to surrender them all? Father, mother—”
“No, not all,” rejoins the ruffian, interrupting. “There is one,” he continues, looking askant at the Indian, with the leer of a demon, “one, I take it, whom the young Tovas chief would wish to retain as an ornament to his court. Pretty creature the niña was, when I last saw her; and I have no doubt still is, unless your Chaco sun has made havoc with her charms. She had a cousin about her own age, by name Cypriano, who was said to be very fond of her; and rumour had it around Assuncion, that they were being brought up for one another.”