The meadows on both sides, where cattle used to graze, were empty! What could it mean?
As he noticed these things an indefinite sense of uneasiness and alarm began to creep over him; and this feeling increased until he had arrived at the turning which led to his own rancho.
At length he headed around the forking angle of the road; and having passed the little coppices of evergreen oaks, came within sight of the house. With a mechanical jerk he drew his horse upon his haunches, and sat in the saddle with open jaw and eyes glaring and protruded.
The rancho he could not see—for the covering interposal columns of the cacti—but through the openings along their tops a black line was visible that had an unnatural look, and a strange film of smoke hung over the azotea!
“God of heaven! what can it mean?” cried he, with a choking voice; but, without waiting to answer himself, he lanced the flanks of his horse till the animal shot off like an arrow.
The intervening ground was passed; and, flinging himself from the saddle, the cibolero rushed through the cactus-fence.
The atajo soon after came up. Antonio hurried through: and there, inside the hot, smoke-blackened walls, half-seated, half-lying on the banqueta, was his master, his head hanging forward upon his breast, and both hands nervously twisted in the long curls of his hair.
Antonio’s foot-fall caused him to look up—only for a moment.
“O God! My mother—my sister!” And, as he repeated the words, his head once more fell forward, while his broad breast rose and fell in convulsed heaving. It was an hour of mortal agony; for some secret instinct had revealed to him the terrible truth.