At dusk she arrived—a bundled-up old dame, her halting steps aided by crutches, and her face shrouded in many tapalos. A large bundle came with her—“medicines,” she gruffly explained. The other women, secretly in deadly terror of her, gladly withdrew at her commands. “If you wish me to make a cure, you must get out and leave me alone with the patient,” she ordered. And not until the premises were clear did she begin operations.
“Arise!” she commanded the suffering Bendita, “arise, and search out the glass trinkets which spirits tell me you have hidden away! Place the trinkets, all of them, in this earthen bowl of water, and let them remain so for eight hours. In the morning drink the water, after removing the glass jewels. You will then be entirely cured, I promise you.”
Dazed and sick, poor Bendita arose from her bed and stumbled about, obeying the old woman’s mandates. All of the jewels were deposited in an earthen bowl, which, half filled with holy water, was placed in the exact centre of the room. Then, swallowing a colorless liquid that Madre Piedad gave her, Bendita was soon fast asleep. The old witch smiled to herself as she listened to the sick girl’s deep, regular breathing. “Well may she sleep,” she muttered, who had shamelessly given a nostrum that would induce eight hours’ sleep.
And now the old body set busily to work. First she deftly manufactured, out of her mysterious bundle, a dummy figure that exactly resembled her own. This she seated prominently before the doorway, so that chance visitors seeing it would, in their fear of her, retire without entering. Quickly she slipped out of her many tapalos and other disguises, and stood forth, straight, young, and lovely—no less a being than the jilted Ponciana! Hastily she removed the jewels from their watery resting-place, transferring them to a stout bag, which she tied about her waist, under a reboso. The bowl she left in its original position, save that into it she cast a small, ragged, rudely made doll, into which had been plunged many pins. This done, she was ready for flight. “Adios, Bendita,” she chuckled, with a wicked smile on her pretty face. “You can have my lover—for I have your rich jewels!”
Various neighbors came next morning to inquire for the sick girl, but were frightened away by the supposed figure of the witch. Bendita herself, waking up entirely cured after ten hours’ sleep, first discovered the trick, and cast forth the dummy figure, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But all was not lost, even if the jewels were gone for aye. Because, drolly enough, Amado was so sorry for the bereft one that he married her, and they have been happy ever after.
And Ponciana? Did you ever happen to see the exquisite Señora de la Villa y Garcia, “of Mexico and Paris,” with her wrinkled old husband, and her beautiful toilettes and jewels? Well, that is Ponciana.
THE MAN-DOG
By Nathan C. Kouns
My first knowledge of the singular being called “Du Chien, the Man-Dog,” began when we were on duty down in the Peché country, a short time after General Taylor’s celebrated “Run on the Banks,” in the vicinity of Mansfield. The cavalry had really very little to do except “to feed,” and await orders. As a result of this idleness many of the officers and men formed pleasant acquaintances with the hospitable planters in whose neighborhood we were located.
One of the planters whom I found to be most congenial was Captain Martas, a French creole, whose father had come from Languedoc. He was himself native-born. He was a man of forty-eight or fifty years of age, and had two sons by his first marriage, who were in the army of Virginia, and a boy two years of age, by his second wife, who was a young and beautiful lady. The housekeeper was a mulatto girl, who was in every physical development almost a perfect being—even her small hands looking like consummate wax-work. She had been taught, petted, and indulged as much, perhaps, or more than any slave should have been, especially by Captain Martas, who uniformly spoke to her more in the tone of a father addressing his daughter, than in that of a master commanding a slave. She was always gentle and obedient. The family seemed to prize her very greatly, and the little boy especially preferred her to his own beautiful mother. I suppose it would be hard for the later generation, who remember little or nothing of the “domestic institution,” to understand how such a pleasant and beautiful confidence and friendship could exist between a slave and her owners, but it was no uncommon thing in the South before the war.