They had accomplished whatever purpose had kept them near the field; and they were now en route for some more distant scene of action.
I had been actually riding after them—on that headlong chase which carried me into the midst of their improvised ambuscade!
As a prisoner, my position lay in the rear—only one or two files of the cuadrilla riding behind me.
I could see Rayas in front, at the head of his band.
I wondered he did not hang back for the purpose of taunting me with his triumphant speeches. I could only account for his not doing so, by the supposition that he was a man of patience, and that my hour of torture had not arrived.
That I should have to suffer some fearful indignity, in all likelihood, and the loss of my life, I felt certain. What had occurred between myself and the brigand chief, had established a relationship that must end in the ruin of one or the other; and it was clear that I was to be the victim. It needed not that hideous grin with which he had regarded me, on becoming his prisoner—nor the jovial style in which he talked of a revanche,—to assure me that for this mild term I might substitute the phrase—“Deadly revenge!”
He had promised his associates a spectacle on their arrival at La Rinconada. I had no doubt, that in that spectacle I was myself to be the prominent figure; or at all events the chief sufferer.
I had been riding for some time, absorbed in meditations, that I need not pronounce painful. Circumstanced as I was, they could not be pleasant. It was only in an occasional and involuntary glance, that my eyes had rested upon Rayas, at the head of his cuadrilla.
I had not noticed a peculiar personage riding by his side. This arose from the fact, that the individual in question was of shorter stature than the other salteadores, by nearly the head, and therefore hidden from my view by the bodies of the brigands habitually interposed between us.
After cresting the ridge above mentioned, and commencing the descent on its opposite side, I could command a better view of those in front; and then it was that the individual, riding alongside of Rayas, attracted my attention. Not only attracted it, but fixed it, to the exclusion of every other thought—even the reflections I had been hitherto indulging in, upon my own unfortunate situation.