When he reached the ranch he was about to dismount and open the “palisade,” or barrier poles that closed the way. But near it he discovered a small half-breed, about ten years of age, a chubby little fellow with velvety antelope’s eyes, and a skin of a lustrous light chocolate color. The small boy, one finger in his nose, was smiling at him.
“The master went out early this morning,” he said in reply to Richard’s question. “Last night someone stole one of his cows.”
“And where’s your mistress, Cachafaz?”
Young Puck, who had earned his name Cachafaz through an unbelievable series of deviltries, took his finger out of his nose, and pointed vaguely to the horizon line.
“She just now left. You’ll find her somewhere near.”
And with his dirty forefinger he gestured in a zigzag towards the distant desert. Watson grasped the fact that for young master Cachafaz “just now” might mean one hour, or two or three, and “somewhere near” might mean anywhere within two leagues. But he must see Celinda! Determined to find her, he set his horse off at a gallop towards the open, trusting that luck would lead him in the right direction.
But what young Cachafaz had not told the visitor was that, in his estimable mother’s opinion, the little mistress of the ranch was sick. Cachafaz’s mother was an old Indian woman who had come to take Sebastiana’s place as housekeeper; but she lacked some of Sebastiana’s virtues; she had neither her good humor nor her talent for work. All day long she kept a Paraguay cigar in one corner of her blue, nicotine-stained lips, and when don Carlos wasn’t at home, she used his carved calabash and silver bombilla for the absorption of her own mate.
The servants and peons at the ranch looked upon Cachafaz’s mother with superstitious respect, for it was generally believed that she was a witch and held dealings with the invisible spirits of the air, those that howl as they whirl inside the sand columns as high as towers, that the hurricanes drive in front of them when they come down from the plateau lands. When the old squaw noticed that Celinda was in very poor spirits indeed and found her crying several times, she shook her head knowingly, as though all this merely confirmed her suspicions.
“The trouble with the girl is that she’s sick, and I know what sickness she’s sick of.”
An ancestor of the old woman’s had been a great medicine man back in the times when the Indians were still the owners of the land. He was always summoned whenever the chiefs fell sick. His son had inherited his secret lore, but unfortunately he had handed on only a part of it to his daughter, who became Cachafaz’s mother.