Chapter Thirty Four.
Padre Cornaga.
Astonishment still held me speechless, as it did my companion—motionless, too, as the maguey leaves, radiating around us.
Had I known the real signification of what had just transpired, I might have acted with more promptitude, and ten times the energy.
As it was, I felt like one slowly recovering from a state of torpidity—from an ill-digested dream!
“What does it all mean?” I inquired of the stage-driver, without stirring from my place.
“Darn’d if I know, cap’n; ’cept it air one band o’ robbers that’s attackted the t’other, and stripped ’em of their spoils. The conq’rors ’pear to be clean gone away, an’ hev took the weemen too! They’ve sloped off on t’other side o’ the shanty. I kin hear ’em yet, making their way up the mountain! Thar’s a path there; tho’ it ain’t so easy to climb. I reck’n they’ve gone up it, toatin up the gurls along wi’ ’em. The reezun they ain’t still screechin’ is, they’ve got ’em eyther gagged, or tapado.”
“Tapado?”
“Yes; muffled up—thar faces covered wi’ something—to hinder them from seeing their way, or singin’ out. They only do it, when the weemen show refactory.”
What mattered it to me? What mattered, whether Dolores Villa-Señor was the wife of one robber, or the mistress of another? Why should I care now? She could never be mine!