Behind the hacienda—at some hundred paces distance from the stockade—the clearing ended, and thence extended the virgin forest in all its sombre and primitive majesty.
The cultivated ground was intersected by a considerable stream of water. During the dry season it ran gently and silently along, but in the season of rain it would suddenly change into an impetuous torrent that inundated the whole plain, bearing huge rocks along in its current, and every year widening its channel.
Perhaps the most powerful of Arab chiefs, the richest patriarch of ancient times, never counted such superb and numerous herds as roamed over the pasturage of the Hacienda del Venado.
About an hour before sunset—on that same day on which the travellers departed from La Poza—two men, one on horseback, the other mounted on a mule, were seen traversing the plain in the direction of the hacienda. Both horse and mule were each a splendid specimen of his kind—the horse with fiery eye, broad chest, and curving, swan-like neck, was scarce more to be admired than the mule, that with fine, delicate limbs, rounded flanks, and shining coat, walked side by side with him.
This horseman was the master of the hacienda, Don Augustin Peña. His costume consisted of a hat of Guayaquil grass, a shirt of the finest cambric, an embroidered vest, and silk velvet pantaloons fastened down the sides with large buttons of gold.
His companion, the rider of the mule, was the chaplain of the hacienda, a reverend Franciscan monk in a sort of half convent costume. This consisted of an ample blue frock confined around the waist with a thick cord of silk, the tassels of which hung down below his knees. Beneath this appeared a pair of large riding-boots heavily spurred. Upon his head a grey beaver, somewhat jauntily set, gave to the Franciscan an appearance rather soldier-like than monastic.
The haciendado appeared to be regarding with a look of pride his rich possessions—extending beyond view on every side of him—as if he was reflecting how much this kind of wealth was superior to golden ingots shut idly in a chest; while the monk seemed to be absorbed in some profound reverie.
“By Saint Julian! the patron saint of travellers!” said Don Augustin, breaking silence, “you have been more than twenty-four hours absent! I was afraid, reverend father, that some jaguar had swallowed both you and your mule.”
“Man proposes, and God disposes,” replied the monk. “When I took my departure from the hacienda, I did not except to be gone more than a few hours—giving Christian burial to poor Joaquin, that had been killed by one of the bulls—but just as I had blessed the earth where they had buried him, a young man came galloping up like a thunderbolt, both himself and horse all of a sweat, to beg that I would go along with him and confess his mother who was upon her death-bed. Only ten leagues he said it was, and I should have been glad for a pretext to get off from such a difficult turn of duty; but at the earnest entreaty of the young fellow, and knowing who he was, I could not refuse him. Who do you think he was?”
“How should I know?” replied the haciendado.