Chapter Thirty Five.
Double Mounted.
The labourers hoeing among the young maize plants, and the tlachiquero drawing the sap from his magueys, saw a sight to astonish them. Two horses of unusual size, both carrying double, and going at full gallop as if running a race—on one of them two men in cloaks, blue and scarlet; the other ridden by a giant, with a mis-shapen monkey-like creature clinging on the croup behind—harness bridles, with collars dancing loose around their necks—chains hanging down and clanking at every bound they made—all this along field paths, in an out-of-the-way neighbourhood where such horses and such men had never been seen before! To the cultivator of “milpas” and the collector of “aguamiel” it was a sight not only to astonish, but inspire them with awe, almost causing the one to drop his hoe, the other his half-filled hog-skin, and take to their heels. But both being of the pure Aztecan race, long subdued and submissive, yet still dreaming of a return to its ancient rule and glories, they might have believed it their old monarchs, Monctezuna and Guatimozin, come back again, or the god Oatluetzale himself.
In whatever way the spectacle affected them, they were not permitted long to look upon it. For the galloping pace was kept up without halt or slowing; the strange-looking horses—with the men upon their backs, still stranger to look at—soon entered a chapparal, which bordered the maize and maguey fields, and so passed out of sight.
“We’re near the end of our ride now,” said Rivas to Kearney, after they had been some time threading their way through the thicket, the horses from necessity going at a walk. “If ’twere not for this ironmongery around our ankles, I could almost say we’re safe. Unfortunately, where we’ve got to go the chains will be a worse impediment than ever. The file! Have we forgotten it?”
“No,” answered Kearney, drawing it from under his cloak, and holding it up.
“Thoughtful of you, caballero. In the haste, I had; and we should have been helpless without it, or at all events awkwardly fixed. If we only had time to use it now. But we haven’t—not so much as a minute to spare. Besides the lances from Chapultepec, there’s a cavalry troop of some kind—huzzars I take it—coming on from the city. While we were cutting loose from the carriage, I fancied I heard a bugle-call in the direction cityward. Of course, with guns and bells signalling, we may expect pursuit from every point of the compass. Had we kept to the roads, we’d have been met somewhere. As it is, if they give us another ten minutes’ grace, I’ll take you into a place where there’s not much fear of our being followed—by mounted men, anyhow.”
Kearney heard this without comprehending. Some hiding-place, he supposed, known to the Mexican. It could only mean that. But where? Looking ahead, he saw the mountains with their sides forest-clad, and there a fugitive might find concealment. But they were miles off; and how were they to be reached by men afoot—to say nothing of the chains—with cavalry in hue and cry all around them? He put the question.
“Don’t be impatient, amigo!” said the Mexican in response; “you’ll soon see the place I speak of, and that will be better than any description I could give. It’s a labyrinth which would have delighted Daedalus himself. Mira! You behold it now!”
He pointed to a façade of rock, grey, rugged, and precipitous, trending right and left through the chapparal far as they could see. A cliff, in short, though of no great elevation; on its crest, growing yuccas, cactus, and stunted mezquite trees.