What they said to him need not be repeated: enough to know that when their message was finally delivered it appeared to produce a magical effect upon the Colonel, who was heard to give utterance to a stifled cry of joy.
Holding by one hand the withers of his horse—which he appeared to need as a support to hinder him from falling out of his saddle—with the other he was observed to conceal something in the breast of his coat, apparently a packet which the messengers had handed to him. They, in their turn, were seen to bound joyfully over the ground at some word which Don Rafael had spoken to them, and which seemed to have produced on Zapote an effect resembling the dance of Saint Vitus.
In another moment the Colonel drew his dagger from its sheath, and called out in a voice loud enough to be heard by all:—“God does not will that this man should die. He has sent these men as the saviours of his life. I acknowledge the hand of God!”
And forgetting that he held in his power his most mortal foe, the murderer of his father—forgetting his oath, no more to be remembered amidst the delicious emotions that filled his heart—remembering only the promise of mercy he had made to Gertrudis, herself—he leant back over the croup of his saddle, and cut the lazo by which the brigand was attached to the tail of his horse.
Disdaining to listen to the outpouring of thanks which the craven wretch now lavished upon him, he turned once more towards the messengers.
“Where is she who sent you?” inquired he in a low voice.
“There!” answered Zapote, pointing to a group of horsemen who at that moment were seen advancing along the shore as the escort to a litera which appeared in their midst.
Roncador, freed from the human body, which attached to his tail had so frightened him, no longer refused to obey the spur; and in another moment he was bounding in the direction where the curtains of the litera of Gertrudis were seen undulating under the last rays of the waning moon.