"Oh stop, Felipe, stop! What madness is this?" cried the girl, and she drew rein and pulled up. Felipe seized the bridle, his face aflame with baffled passion.
"Loose the rein!" he cried to her desperately. "Let the horse come on. He will carry you over. I can swim."
"Oh, you are mad!" said she, gazing on the wide rolling flood and the distant shore beyond. "Don't dream of such a thing. We shall both be drowned."
"Well, let us drown, then; we shall be together," he exclaimed passionately. "Give him the rein. Come on. Better that than to be beaten like dogs and separated." As he spoke he looked over his shoulder and saw that Salvador, his face raging with anger, was within a few yards of them. Felipe raised his arm to strike Josefa's horse, and force him to take the desperate plunge into the boiling current.
The desperate plunge was never taken. A shot cracked. Felipe felt a great blow, and his right arm fell powerless to his side. Salvador was close by with a smoking pistol in his hand. Josefa's terrified horse wheeled round and bounded away in terror from the bank of the dreaded river. Salvador dashed in between her and Felipe and fired at him again. Felipe hardly knew if he was hit again or not, but instinctively he ran off some fifty yards and then stopped. Wounded and weaponless, what could he do against the murderous firearm in the hands of the cacique?
"Yes, run, you villain, you scoundrel!" shouted Salvador. "Run, and don't stop within a hundred leagues of me! If ever I catch you near the village again I'll kill you—I will," and he poured forth a torrent of abuse at the wretched youth who stood there on the river's bank the very picture of misery, the blood running down his right arm and dropping from his hand to the ground. Josefa saw him, and overcome with pity and fear for him turned her horse towards him, but the animal, dreading the water, refused to approach it.
Salvador rode up to her and seized her rein. "Ah, traitress, ungrateful, disobedient!" hissed his angry voice. "I'll settle with you for this piece of work, be sure." And leaving Felipe he started away from the river, dragging the horse and its rider after him across the sand-dunes.
The horse followed not unwillingly, but too slowly for Salvador's impatience. He dropped the rein, pulled his horse behind, and striking the other violently with his whip forced him into a gallop. The position was a tempting one to his passion, and the cruel rawhide fell once and again, not on the horse only but also on his rider. The girl uttered no sound and made no resistance, only she bent forward over the animal's neck before the shower of blows. At this pitiful sight her lover gave a great cry of despair and started forward to the rescue, wounded and unarmed as he was. But bleeding, exhausted, and on foot, it was hopeless for him to attempt to overtake the horses. He made one despairing rush with all his failing strength, then he fell headlong and lay senseless on the sand.