Or may it be, as Don Estevan has said, that Colonel Requeñes with his soldiers is absent from Arispe, and there is a difficulty in raising a force of civilians sufficient for effecting their rescue?
These conjectures, with many others, pass through their minds, producing a despondency, now at its darkest and deepest. For at first, in their impatience, blind to probabilities, they fancied theirs a winged messenger—a Mercury, who should have brought them succour long since. That bright dream is passed, and the reaction has set in, gloomy as shadow of death itself.
Nor seems there to be much cheer in the camp of their besiegers. They can look down upon it from a distance near enough to distinguish the individual forms of the savages, and note all their actions in the open. Through the telescope can be read even the expressions on their features, showing that they, too, have their anxieties and apprehensions; no doubt from the black horse and his rider having got away from them.
Their scouts are still observed to come and go. Some are sent northward, others to the south; the last evidently to look out for the return of the raiding party gone down the Horcasitas.
Another day passes, and they are seen coming back, at a pace which betokens their bringing a report of an important nature. That it is a welcome one to their comrades in the camp can be told by their shouts of triumph as they approach.
Soon after they upon the mesa are made aware of the cause, by seeing the red marauders themselves coming on towards the camp, in array very different from that when leaving it. Instead of only their arms and light equipments, every man of them is now laden with spoil, every horse besides his rider carrying a load, either on withers or croup. And they have other horses with them now—a caballada—mules, too, all under pack and burden.
No, not all. As the long straggling line draws closer to the Cerro, they on its summit see a number of these animals bearing on their backs something more than the loot of plundered houses. They see women, most of them appearing to be young girls.
As they are conducted on to the camp, and inside its enclosure, Don Estevan, viewing them through his telescope, can trace upon their persons, as their features, all the signs and lines proclaiming utter despair: dresses torn, hair hanging dishevelled, and eyes downcast, with not a ray or spark of hope in them.
Others look through the glass, to be pained by the heart-saddening spectacle; each of the married ones, as he views it, thinking of his own wife or daughter, in fear their fate may be the same—a fate too horrid to be dwelt upon in thought, much less to be talked about.
This day they are not permitted to see more. Twilight is already on, and night’s darkness, almost instantly succeeding, shuts out from their view everything below.