He bent over it, with a different thought—a feeling of surprise commingled with a touch of superstition. The track looked recent, as if made on the day before. There had been wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. Not one of these had wasted it. Even the angry elements appeared to have passed over without destroying it—as if to spare it for a testimony against the outraged laws of Nature—their God.
Calhoun dismounted, with the design to obliterate the track of the three-quarter shoe. Better for him to have spared himself the pains. The crease of his boot-heel crushing in the stiff mud was only an additional evidence as to who had ridden the broken-shoed horse. There was one coming close behind capable of collecting it.
Once more in his saddle, the ex-officer rode on—reflecting on his own astuteness.
His reflections had scarce reached the point of reverie, when the hoof-stroke of a horse—not his own—came suddenly within hearing. Not within sight: for the animal making them was still screened by the chapparal.
Plainly was it approaching; and, although at a slow pace, the measured tread told of its being guided, and not straying. It was a horse with a rider upon his back.
In another instant both were in view; and Calhoun saw before him Isidora Covarubio de los Llanos; she at the same instant catching sight of him!
It was a strange circumstance that these two should thus encounter one another—apparently by chance, though perhaps controlled by destiny. Stranger still the thought summoned up in the bosoms of both.
In Calhoun, Isidora saw the man who loved the woman she herself hated. In Isidora, Calhoun saw the woman who loved him he both hated and had determined to destroy.
This mutual knowledge they had derived partly from report, partly from observation, and partly from the suspicious circumstances under which more than once they had met. They were equally convinced of its truth. Each felt certain of the sinister entanglement of the other; while both believed their own to be unsuspected.
The situation was not calculated to create a friendly feeling between them. It is not natural that man, or woman, should like the admirer of a rival. They can only be friends at that point where jealousy prompts to the deadliest vengeance; and then it is but a sinister sympathy.