About an hour after this incident we find the two adventurers upon the summit of the Cerro-de-la-mesa. Thither they had just transported the canoe of Costal, which, being a light craft, they had carried up on their shoulders without much difficulty. They had placed it keel upwards close to the wall of the bamboo hovel.
“Ouf!” grunted the negro as he sat down upon it. “I think we have fairly earned a minute’s rest. What’s your opinion, Costal?”
“Didn’t you travel through the province of Valladolid?” asked the Indian without replying to Clara’s idle question.
“Of course I did,” answered the black. “Valladolid, Acapulco, and several other of the south-western provinces. Ah, I know them well—from the smallest path to the most frequented of the great roads—every foot of them. How could I help knowing them? for, in my capacity of mozo de mulas, did I not travel them over and over again with my master, Don Vallerio Trujano, a worthy man, whose service I only quitted to turn proprietor in this province of Oajaca?”
Clara pronounced the word proprietor emphatically, and with an important air. His proprietorship consisted in being the owner of a small jacal, or bamboo hut, and the few feet of ground on which it was built—of which, however, he was only a renter under Don Mariano de Silva. To the haciendado he hired himself out a part of each year, during the gathering of the cochineal crop. The rest of his time he usually passed in a sort of idle independence.
“Why do you ask me these questions?” he added.
“I don’t see,” said Costal, speaking as much to himself as to his companion, “how we can enrol ourselves in the army of Hidalgo. As a descendant of the Caciques of Tehuantepec, I am not above hiring myself out as a tiger-hunter; but I can never consent to wear a soldier’s uniform.”
“And why not?” asked Clara. “For my part, I think it would be very fine to have a splendid green coat with red facings, and bright yellow trowsers, like one of these pretty parroquets. I think, however, we need not quarrel on that score. It’s not likely that the Señor Hidalgo, though he is generalissimo of the American insurgent army, will have many uniforms to spare; and unless we enrol ourselves as officers, which is not likely, I fear—”
“Stay!” said Costal, interrupting him. “Why couldn’t we act as guides and scouts, since you know the country so well? In that capacity we could go and come as we pleased, and would have every opportunity to search for the Siren with the dishevelled hair.”
“But is the Siren to be seen everywhere?” naïvely inquired Clara.