At length Santos handed back the miniature, with a sigh. “Such a face as that my eyes have never seen,” he remarked. “There is nothing more to be said.”
“There is a great deal more to be said,” I returned. “I have thought of an easy plan to help your mistress. When you have reported this conversation, tell her to remember the offer of assistance made to her last night. I said I would be a brother to her, and I shall keep my promise. You three cannot think of any better scheme to save Demetria than this one you have told me, but it is after all a very poor scheme, full of difficulty and danger to her. My plan is a simpler and safer one. Tell her to come out to-night at midnight, after the moon has set, to meet me under the trees behind the house. I shall be there waiting with a horse for her, and will take her away to some safe place of concealment where Don Hilario will never find her. When she is once out of his power it will be time enough to think of some way to turn him out of the estancia and to arrange matters. See that she does not fail to meet me, and let her take a few clothes and some money, if she has any; also her jewels, for it would not be safe to leave them in the house with Don Hilario.”
Santos was delighted with my scheme, which was so much more practical, though less romantic, than the one hatched by those three simple-minded conspirators. With heart full of hope, he was about to leave me when he suddenly exclaimed, “But, señor, how will you get a horse and side-saddle for Doña Demetria?”
“Leave it all to me,” I said; then we separated, he to return to his mistress, who was no doubt anxiously waiting to know the result of our conversation, I to get through the next fifteen hours in the best way I could.
CHAPTER XXVI
After leaving Santos I rode on to a belt of wood about two miles east of the road, and, passing through it, surveyed the country lying beyond. The only habitation near it was a shepherd's lonely rancho, standing on an open plain of yellow grass, over which a scattered flock of sheep and a few horses were grazing. I determined to remain in the wood till near noon, then proceed to the rancho to get breakfast, and commence my search for a horse and side-saddle in the neighbourhood. After unsaddling my horse and tying him to a tree, where there were some pickings of grass and herbage about the roots, I lit a cigar and made myself comfortable on my rugs in the shade. Presently I had some visitors in a flock of urracas, or magpies, as they are called in the vernacular, or Guira cuckoos; a graceful, loquacious bird resembling a magpie, only with a longer tail and a bold, red beak. These ill-mannered birds skulked about in the branches over me all the time I remained in the wood, scolding me so incessantly in their intolerably loud, angry, rattling notes, varied occasionally with shrill whistlings and groans, that I could scarcely even hear myself think. They soon succeeded in bringing all the other birds within hearing distance to the spot to take part in the demonstration. It was unreasonable of the cuckoos, to say the least of it, for it was now long past their breeding season, so that parental solicitude could not be pleaded as an excuse for their churlish behaviour. The others—tanagers, finches, tyrant-birds; red, white, blue, grey, yellow, and mixed—were, I must own, less troublesome, for, after hopping about for a while, screaming, chirping, and twittering, they very sensibly flew away, no doubt thinking their friends the cuckoos were making a great deal too much fuss. My sole mammalian visitor was an armadillo, that came hurrying towards me, looking curiously like a little old bent-backed gentleman in a rusty black coat trotting briskly about on some very important business. It came to within three yards of my feet, then stopped, and seemed astonished beyond measure at my presence, staring at me with its little, bleary, blinking eyes, and looking more like the shabby old gentleman than ever. Then it trotted away through the trees, but presently returned for a second inspection; and after that it kept coming and going, till I inadvertently burst out laughing, whereupon it scuttled away in great alarm, and returned no more. I was sorry I had frightened the amusing little beggar, for I felt in that exceedingly light-hearted mood when one's merriment is ready to brim over at the slightest provocation. Yet that very morning poor Demetria's appeal had deeply stirred my heart, and I was now embarked on a most Quixotic and perhaps perilous adventure! Possibly the very fact of that adventure being before me had produced an exhilarating effect on my mind, and made it impossible for me to be sad, or even decently composed.
After spending a couple of hours in the pleasant shade, the blue smoke ascending from the rancho before me gave notice of the approaching breakfast hour; so, saddling my horse, I went to make my morning call, the cuckoos hailing my departure with loud mocking shouts and whistling calls, meant to inform all their feathered friends that they had at last succeeded in making their haunt too hot for me.
At the rancho I was received by a somewhat surly-looking young man, with long, intensely black hair and moustache, and who wore in place of a hat a purple cotton handkerchief tied about his head. He did not seem to be over-pleased at my visit, and invited me rather ungraciously to alight if I thought proper. I followed him into the kitchen, where his little brown-skinned wife was preparing breakfast, and I fancied, after seeing her, that her prettiness was the cause of his inhospitable manner towards a stranger. She was singularly pretty, with a seductive, soft brown skin, ripe, pouting lips of a rich purple-red, and when she laughed, which happened very frequently, her teeth glistened like pearls. Her crisp, black hair hung down unbound and disordered, for she looked like a very careless little beauty; but when she saw me enter, she blushed and tossed her tresses away from her shoulders, then carefully felt the pendants dropping from her ears to assure herself that they were safe, or possibly to attract my attention to them. The frequent glances her laughing, dark eyes shot at me soon convinced me that she was one of those charming little wives—charming, that is, when they are the wives of other people—who are not satisfied with a husband's admiration.