There was now enough of light to enable me to distinguish her features. It needed not this. The undulating outlines of her head, neck, and shoulders, like a cameo cut against the sky—were easily identified.
It was an image too firmly fixed in my memory, and too deeply engraven upon my heart, to be ever more mistaken.
I had just time to see that her dress was torn, her hair tossed, and hanging like a cloud about her shoulders—just time to note that she looked wan and woe-stricken—when the voice of Carrasco, rising above the sibillation of the torrent, summoned us to a parley.
“Caballeros!” he cried out, “in the darkness I have no chance to know who you are; but, from your mode of making approach, I take it you are our enemies. Furthermore, from the fact of your being armed with rifles, you should be Americanos! Am I right?”
I had not sufficiently recovered coolness to make reply. My eyes, my thoughts, were still fixed upon Mercedes.
“What else should we be?” answered the stage-driver by my side, “That same we air, an’ no mistake about it.”
“Why have you come here?”
“To capter the cussdest cut-throat in all Mexiko: for that same ye air, Mister Capting Carrasco.”
“Hola, amigo! You’ve made a mistake this time? You appear to take me for the noted Carrasco; and my people, no doubt, for a cuadrilla of salteadores? We’re nothing of the sort, I assure you. Only a band of honest patriotas; who, loving our country, have continued to fight for it—as you know, after our grand army has seen fit to forsake the field. Por Dios; señores Americanos! You’re not the men to blame us for that? Just now we acknowledge ourselves vanquished; though still only besieged. But as we have no supplies in our castle here—you will give me credit for some candour in confessing it?—moreover, as we believe it hopeless to hold out against you, we have made up our minds to capitulate. All we ask for ourselves is an honourable cartel of surrender.”
Surrender! The word fell sweet upon my ears—and for a particular reason. It promised safety for Mercedes.