The trooper was for the moment in great danger of almost as rude treatment as Arroyo had just given his associate. Don Rafael restrained himself, however; and, without waiting to reflect on consequences, he ordered one of his followers—the best mounted of them—to proceed at once to the hacienda Del Valle, and bring fifty men well armed, with a piece of cannon by which the gate of Las Palmas might be broken open.
The messenger departed at a gallop, while Don Rafael and his three remaining troopers, screening themselves behind the crest of the ridge, sat in their saddles silently awaiting his return.
It was long before Don Rafael’s blood began to cool; and in proportion as it did so, he experienced a degree of sorrow for the act of hostility he was about to undertake against the father of Gertrudis.
A violent contest commenced within his breast, between two opposing sentiments of nearly equal strength. Whether he persisted in his resolution, or retreated from it, both courses seemed equally criminal. The voice of duty, and that of passion, spoke equally loud. To which should he listen?
The struggle, long and violent, between these antagonistic sentiments, had not yet terminated, when the detachment arrived upon the ground. This decided him. It was too late to retire from his first determination. On towards the hacienda! Don Rafael drew his sword, and, placing himself at the head of his troop, rode down the hill. The bugle sounding the “advance,” warned the inhabitants of the hacienda that a detachment of cavalry was crossing the ridge.
A few minutes after, the squadron halted before the great gate, at a little distance from the walls. A horseman advanced in front of the line, and once more having sounded the bugle, in the name of Don Rafael Tres-Villas, Captain of the Royalist army, summoned Don Mariano de Silva to deliver up, dead or alive, the insurgents, Arroyo and Bocardo.
The demand having been made, Don Rafael, with pale face, and heart audibly beating, sat motionless in his saddle to await the response.
Silence—profound silence alone made reply to the summons of the horseman and the sound of his trumpet.