woke the slumbering tenants of the assaulted house.

Too late! the unwary gatekeeper was surprised; the heavy doors were
forced open, the courts in an instant were full of armed men, and Don
Rafael, half dressed, staggering from his scarce tried slumbers, was
seized by a half-dozen soldiers, while a voice he well knew, though it
came as if from the dead, and knew to be that of a man who was as
inflexible in act as unscrupulous in purpose, exclaimed,—

“How now, Don Rafael? Doña Isabel Garcia has at last showed her true
colors. It is for Gonzales and the Liberals the men and treasure of Tres
Hermanos have been accumulating! What, nothing for her Mother the
Church? Ah, it is the old story,—nothing for those of her own
household!”

The unwelcome intruder glanced around him with the air of one familiar
with, yet inimical to, his surroundings; he laughed as he dropped the
point of his sword upon the brick pave, and his spurred heel rang upon
the stone step. Yet a close observer might have noticed a false note in
the light and scornful tone, as though some poignant memory troubled his
present purpose; and it was with a half evasive though still a
threatening glance, that he lifted his eyes to encounter those of the
administrador, who stood a disordered and helpless but resolute prisoner
upon the steps above him.

At the sound of voices and the tramp of men, Chata had run hastily out
from the room of Doña Feliz, whose illness had approached a crisis. The
press of men prevented her from reaching Don Rafael, who imperatively
signed to her to retreat. Still she would have dared much to reach him;
but catching a glimpse of the triumphant countenance of the man at the
foot of the stairs, she drew back, covered her face with her hands and
fled precipitately,—in fear for herself perhaps, but more with an
instinctive feeling that her presence endangered rather than helped her
foster-father. That the General José Ramirez had entered Tres Hermanos
in a mood to seize any pretext to assume toward it and its people the
_rôle_ of an injured and desperate man, was to be seen at a glance. The
very soldiers had already divined as much, and were leading their horses
and mules to drink at the fountain, and invading the arbor and lower
rooms; the sound of their jests and laughter was mingling with the crash
of the great flower-pots, carelessly pushed from their stands, and the
sharp crack of jars of the quaint black and gilded ware of Guadalajara,
which ornamented the corridors.

Chata re-entered the room of the sick woman, with pallid face and lips,
and eyes expanding with a terror such as the mere sight of the imminent
destruction of material things alone could not have occasioned. Terrible
had been the tales she had heard of houses laid waste and property
destroyed; yet even when the horrors seemed about to be repeated around
her, she felt that she could have endured them bravely as among the
chances of war had not this invasion brought to her an intensely dreaded
and peculiar danger. She passed the group of alarmed and excited women
who gathered at the bedside, uttering exclamations of terror, and
kneeling at the head of the couch she clasped in her own the hand of the
unconscious Doña Feliz.

“Grandmother, my dearest!” she murmured in a low voice, yet full of
agony; “surely he will not tear me from thee! Oh, rather may I die with
thee!”

“Oh, by the saints,” cried the voice of Doña Rita in her ear, “for my
child’s sake, Chata, rise and fly to him! It is thou only who canst save
us. What did I tell thee in El Toro? Doña Isabel has ruined us! but for
her foolhardiness in sending aid to Gonzales all might have been well;
but that has brought the wrath of Ramirez upon Rafael!” She turned
toward her prostrate mother-in-law, with something very like fury,
clenching her hand and crying, “Ah! ah! your clever deception will not
seem so happy a one when you wake to find it has killed your son! That
is what you deserve! You deceived even me. Do you think had I known, I
would for all the favor promised me have played mother to the brat of
Leon Vallé?”

The women ceased their cries to listen to this frantic outburst, which
though but Greek to them, had a sound of mystery, which for the moment
deadened their ears to the increasing tumult without. “Leon Vallé!” said
one in an awe-struck voice,—“that was the Señora’s wicked brother.”

“Leon Vallé!” echoed Chata, a new light dawning upon her. “Maria
Sanctissima, can it be?”

“What more natural?” cried Doña Rita, testily. “Was he ever weary of
extorting some proof of Doña Isabel’s devotion? But _Dios mio_, there
was to be an end of her infatuation! Had he not killed her child? What
better chance for vengeance was she to find than to conceal, destroy,
every trace of his, when with devilish mockery he thrust it upon her?
But then he might have known it was like thrusting the lamb into the
jaws of the wolf. On my faith, girl, it maddens me to see you standing
there motionless, when it is as if the legions of Satanas himself were
loose. Go! go! I say, to soothe him. Entreat him to restrain his troops.
The house will be sacked. Who knows what horrors may follow!”

“I will not go to him,” said Chata, slowly, a red spot burning upon
either cheek, her eyes dark with horror. “If he is indeed the man you
say, will he not defend the home of his sister? If I am his child, will
he not claim me? If he does, I must submit; but go to him—No! To save
the hacienda—what has Doña Isabel done for me? To save my life—no!”

                                XXXVIII.

In the few moments during which this scene had passed, the administrador
at a sign from the General had been half forced—though he made no
attempt at resistance—to the lower corridor. Thence he followed his
captor to a dining-room, where a servant with terrified alacrity was
already bringing in cups of chocolate for the breakfast, while a woman
with a tray of small loaves of sweet-bread in her hands dropped it
incontinently at sight of the dreaded Ramirez. He laughed, throwing
himself into a chair, and looking around him with the furtive glance
with which men involuntarily regard places or persons connected with
memories distasteful or horrifying. There was an image of the Virgin of
Guadalupe at one end of the apartment, with a small lamp burning before
it. He crossed himself, and muttered an _Ave_ as he looked at it; then
pointed to a second chair and the cups of chocolate.

“It is early, Don Rafael,” he said lightly, “but I have a soldier’s
appetite, which the fresh air has sharpened,—and you know the saying,
that a stomach at rest makes an active brain; so accompany me, I
entreat, in breaking the morning fast, and then let us to business.” And
with a show of indifference, which imposed far better upon his
followers, who made an interested throng around the door, than upon Don
Rafael, he tasted the chocolate he had drawn to his side.

The administrador remained standing, though the two soldiers, who had
each held an arm, released their grasp and stepped back. Disconcerted by
the thought that in his dishabille he could scarcely present a dignified
figure, Don Rafael still maintained his composure sufficiently to refuse
the proffered refreshment with the air of a man who questions the right
of another to play the part of host,—assuming, in fact, toward the
intruder rather the attitude of personal than of political hostility.

Ramirez divined this, and his face darkened. “You know me, Don Rafael,”
he said in a low tone, “and that I am a man to take no denials.”

“Yes,” answered the administrador, shortly, “I know you. The saints must
have blinded me that I was so easily deceived upon your last visit; but
you had always the power to mask your face at will.”

“Bah! every man has a dozen countenances at his command, if he but know
how to summon them,” replied Ramirez, carelessly, “and a touch of art to
fix their coloring, and twist the eyebrows or moustache. Why, even your
mother was deceived! Where is she now? Ah! that woman was like Isabel
herself; I swear she would have killed me, even when she seemed to love
me most. It is the way of women, like serpents, to twine and sting at
the same moment.”

“My mother is dying,” said Don Rafael, lifting his eyes for a moment
upon the face of the image of Mary. “Yet living or dying, it is not for
a man to hear another speak lightly of his mother. But this is nothing
to the purpose.”

“Nothing,” replied the other, accepting the rebuke; “and I have no time
to lose.” He seemed to forget the chocolate, pushing the cup from him,
and turning as if to rise from the chair. “Look you, Rafael, what money
did Isabel leave with you? Not half her resources went in that mad freak
of raising a troop for Gonzales.”

Perhaps Don Rafael had expected the question, for his countenance
remained imperturbable. “There are horses and cattle and corn and men,
still,” he answered. “The administrador of Tres Hermanos can do nothing
to defend them; but the money,—by Heaven and the Holy Virgin, its
hiding-place is known only to him, and he will die before you shall have
another dollar to add to those which have cost so much blood and so many
tears!”

Ramirez’s eyes flashed; yet the look of astonishment which he threw upon
the small, half-clothed man was as full of admiration as though he had
been a king clad in royal robes. But even a king would not have thwarted
Ramirez with impunity.

“You know me,” he reiterated in the same intonation with which he had
before spoken the words, allowing a long, dark, intimidating gaze to
rest upon the face of Don Rafael.

“Yes, I know you,” was the answer as before. “Yes, I know you; and it is
for that reason I have said that never a dollar belonging to the woman
you have so foully wronged shall pass into your hands. Thank Heaven that
she is not here to be tempted! Thank God that while the identity of
Ramirez with the bane and curse of the house of Garcia has been shaping
itself in my mind, no hint of the truth has been in hers!”

“I do not believe it!” cried Ramirez, violently. “She hates me! for the
sake of that puling boy and her dotard husband she hates me still! ‘The
bane of the house of Garcia,’ said you. Why, what man among them has a
name beyond his own door-stone but me? And the women! Ah, ah! What saint
would have saved the fame of the women of the house of Garcia had it not
been for me?”

Don Rafael glanced around him warningly,—the room was full of strange
faces, beginning to light with wondering curiosity at this strange
conversation, so different in substance from that usual between the
guerilla and his victims. This was no place in which to talk of women;
yet Don Rafael himself desired to avoid a private interview with this
man, while Ramirez on his part assumed an ostentatious air of having
nothing to conceal,—nothing that he might be ashamed his followers
should learn. He knew, in fact, that at that crisis, surrounded as he
was by the most unscrupulous and desperate characters, the prestige of
his mad career might be advantageously heightened rather than
diminished, if he would keep his ascendency. Don Rafael read his
thought, and lest in very hardihood his opponent should be led to
accusations or revelations it would be impossible for him to leave
unanswered, he began one of those long and desultory conversations that,
while apparently frank and unstudied, are triumphs in the art of
avoiding or concealing the real subject at issue.

Ramirez, well as he knew the tricks of the genuine ranchero, whether of
the higher or lower grade, was himself for a time deceived,—for, with
far less than his usual astuteness, he allowed himself to lapse into
occasional denunciations, and to make demands of the administrador that
increased the curiosity and interest of his listeners. These did not in
any degree shake the constancy of Don Rafael, who, with the thought that
the crisis of his life was approaching, crossed his arms upon his breast
and fortified his courage with the remembrance of the vows by which he
had pledged himself, and the less heroic satisfaction that he promised
himself then in thwarting the plans of a man whose will had been as
triumphant as it was insatiable.

Meanwhile, the tumult in the house increased. A wild rumor had spread
that the General José Ramirez was by right the master of the place and
all it contained. Some said he was the lover, others the brother, of
Doña Isabel. At last, even the name by which he had been known there
began to be shouted, though the sound of it was less popular than that
by which he had won his way later to fame. Still, it gave a certain
authority for license where there had been before a show of restraint;
and a speedy assault was made upon the store-rooms and granaries, and
even upon the inner chambers and courts, which contained nothing but
furniture and ornaments,—useless to soldiers on the march, or even as
booty for their wives and followers.

Ramirez listened to the tumult without attempting to interfere.
Evidently his object was to break the resolution of Sanchez by an
exhibition of the destructive and unscrupulous character of his
followers. But Don Rafael never winced except once, when the cry of a
woman pierced the apartment.

Ramirez heard it also. “Ah! it came from the kitchens, from some
scullery-maid,” he commented after a moment. “Now, Don Rafael, you see
and hear for yourself what a crew of devils I have with me,—just the
riff-raff of the mountains, whom that cursed Pedro failed to wile away
from me. _Caramba!_ never was a surprise greater. It would not have
happened but that like a fool I lingered near El Toro waiting for a
chance to pounce upon Gonzales. Never let a private vengeance sway the
judgment,” he added sententiously. “A thousand devils! It seems as if
the hacienda were tumbling about our ears! Yet at a word I can stop it.
Where is the money?”

“If the din never ceases till I reveal that,” answered Don Rafael,
doggedly, “you will never have your revenge on Gonzales; for what I have
sworn I have sworn. The flocks and herds I can’t defend; and what are a
few hundred beeves or horses? But the money; no, by God! if Doña Isabel
herself should command it, I would not suffer that another coin should
touch your bloody hand!”

Ramirez started up with an oath. Involuntarily he glanced at his hand.
It would not have surprised him to have seen it literally red,—and,
strangely enough, the blood gushing from the fatal wound he had dealt
the American, just from the arms of Herlinda, rather than that of his
nephew or Don Gregorio, was that which presented itself to his mind. He
walked the room in a new and undefinable excitement. The sight of Don
Rafael, to whom the destruction of the property that was precious as his
life seemed as nothing to the pleasure of baffling the man he abhorred
of the money he believed absolutely necessary to his success in leading
troops to encounter the well-reinforced and well-equipped Gonzales,
revealed to him the hatred and horror in which he was held. Doubtless
that of the servant was but a mere reflection of that of Doña Isabel.

Well, let them hate him with reason; let the wild mountaineers take
their own sport unchecked. He heard one of the clerks, flying rather
than running through the corridor, exclaim that Don Rafael must come, or
there would be a famine in the place before the next harvest; that the
great storehouses of maize had been forced open, and the contents
scattered throughout the village for horses and men to tread under their
feet; and that the very oxen and sheep were revelling in the abundance,
liable to destroy themselves by very excess, even if the soldiers should
fail to drive them before them.

Ramirez and the administrador glanced at each other. They had not spoken
for many minutes, each feeling the other implacable, yet each perhaps
believing that the wanton destruction would appeal to the other’s weaker
or better nature. Ramirez grew crimson, almost black, with inward
rage,—rage as great with those who were wreaking destruction on his
sister’s house, as with this insignificant yet determined man who
withstood it. Don Rafael was white as death, his lips blue, his eyes
strained; again the cry of a woman sounded on the air! It came from
above. He started toward the door. A dozen hands seized him. Ramirez
turned upon him with his drawn sword.

“Where is my daughter?” he demanded in a voice of fury. “I will find a
way to force the gold from you, but first my daughter,—where is she?”

“Your daughter?” echoed Don Rafael in a tone of such absolute amazement
that even Ramirez was for a second distracted from his rage.

“Yes, my daughter! She whom you have aided Isabel to hide from me all
these years. Faith, it was a pretty trick,—an eye for an eye, with a
vengeance. But after all it was a petty plot, and soon fathomed. You
were less jealous of flesh and blood than of this cursed gold, and gave
me the first inkling of her whereabouts yourself.”

“I?” exclaimed the administrador; “I? What know I of a child of yours?”

“Ah, that is what you must satisfy me of. Where is she,—the Chata, whom
you nodded and hinted about so mysteriously in your cups so many years
ago?”

Don Rafael—if it were possible—turned a shade whiter than before; his
form seemed to shrink, his heart sank with guilty shame and absolute
terror. How well he remembered those few words, which, though so
indirect and apparently unimportant, he had thought of with remorse a
thousand times. And to what a terrible, though utterly unforeseen,
conclusion they had led this man! He lifted his hands above his head.

“By the Blessed Mother, I swear,” he said, “that I know not what you
mean! I know nothing of a child of yours!”

Ramirez looked at him contemptuously. “You will tell me next that the
child your wife denies is yours,” he said.

In effect it had been upon the lips of Don Rafael to claim Chata as his
daughter, as he had done a thousand times before. Was she not his before
all the world? Had she not been from the very moment the eyes of his
wife had rested upon her? But she had betrayed the confidence to which
she had been but partially admitted,—Rita! He hesitated, and Ramirez
seized the advantage.

“You dare not!” he exclaimed. “Your wife has confessed all: it will
never do to trust a woman with a secret in company of a man who cares to
learn it, though very perversity might keep her silent with a world of
women.” The sight of the discomfiture of Don Rafael had restored to
Ramirez some portion of good nature. “The screeching has ceased,” he
added. “Yet I am a fond father. I would assure myself of my child’s
safety. Where is the girl? I must and will see her, if but to tell her
why I played her false last week. Where is my daughter?”

Don Rafael’s face, which throughout this interview had retained its
pallor, crimsoned with excess of agitation. The mystery of Chata’s visit
to the hacienda was revealed. Had she met this man? Did she know—did she
believe? He remembered her changed aspect, her silence, her tears.
Ramirez stood watching him with impatience, yet triumph. The crimson
flush convicted the administrador. Don Rafael strove in vain to steady
the glance of his suffused and burning eyes, to still the throbbing of
his temples, while he sought to command the most impressive and
convincing words in which to answer and forever silence this mad
assumption. But none presented themselves. The group around listened
breathlessly, more excited than Ramirez himself. They looked silently
from face to face of the two men who were engaged in this singular
dispute. Inside the room one might have heard a feather float through
the air, so deep was the silence; and at last, in despair of finding
imposing words, the administrador uttered the simple denial, “Chata is
not your child.”

Most of the men drew back for the moment convinced. Not so Ramirez. “It
is false!” he cried. “I have your own maudlin hint, and your wife’s
positive confession, that the girl is neither hers nor yours.”

Don Rafael grew pale again. There was that in his face which would have
augured ill to Doña Rita had she seen it; but he said with an effort, “I
will not give my wife the lie. The child is neither mine nor hers!”

“Then whose—whose but mine?” demanded Ramirez fiercely.

Don Rafael paused a moment as before. In an instant he had recalled
the circumstances that had attended the adoption of the child. Rita
had been young, placable, easily pleased with a gift: the fewer
confidants the better; it was ever the duty of a Mexican wife to obey
unquestioningly,—she had been obedient then; it had not been necessary
that she should know more than it had been wise to tell. Don Rafael
drew a deep breath of relief. Ramirez and the group around him watched
him narrowly.

“Declare then!” queried Ramirez at last, “whose daughter is she if not
mine?”

“I will not say,” answered Don Rafael; “but I do swear she is not yours.
Stay,” he added, struck with an idea. “What reason have you for thinking
she is yours?”

“Reason!” echoed Ramirez scornfully; “because fifteen years ago, more or
less,—perhaps you have reason here to remember well that year,—I sent my
child here, to Doña Isabel: it was a whim of mine that she should have
tender nurture and decent training. I was a fool to trust a woman’s
love. Of course Isabel remembered her own bantling, though I had even
some foolish thought that the little one I sent might console her,—most
women have hearts for baby wants and fancies that sicken men. Of course
for her it was a chance for revenge too good to be lost. I have been in
two minds ever since I knew how she scorned my trust whether to be angry
or pleased with you for aiding her purpose. But let it pass; yield the
child and the money quietly and”—he looked over his shoulder with an
impatient frown—“that infernal tumult and destruction shall cease. If
not—”

“I will yield neither the girl nor the money;” replied Don Rafael. “They
are neither of them mine nor yours; but I have possession of both, and
will keep them.—Surely Rita has both girls in the secret recess, as we
have always planned in such a case as this,” he thought, with a qualm at
the remembrance of his wife’s treason, as revealed by Ramirez. “Surely
at such a time she will protect a young damsel, even though she be not
her own child.”

Ramirez looked at him with a lowering brow, repeating again, “If not
mine, whose child is she? By Heaven, I know she is mine! There could not
be on all the earth a creature in whom Doña Isabel or Feliz or yourself
could have so deep an interest as to trouble yourself for life with his
child. It is incredible, impossible. Unless she is—” He paused on the
name, looked round him, clinched his hands, advanced to Don Rafael, and
gazed searchingly into his face.

Don Rafael did not flinch. Ramirez burst into a laugh. “I would have
killed you had you dared even to have looked askance,” he said.
“_Caramba!_ the women of the Garcias may be fools or devils,—they have
shown the spirit of both; but if a man should ever kill another because
of one of them, it would be for his daring, not in revenge of his
triumph.”

Did these words indicate a tardy repentance, a conviction that Herlinda
had been indiscreet but innocent? Don Rafael had no time to discuss the
question with himself; but he had such new insight into the mind of
Ramirez that he was warned from giving any fresh cause of offence. Had
he had no previous reasons, it would have been a sufficient one for him
to keep inviolate the secret which he had sworn to preserve to his
life’s end. In his present humor, the man with whom he had to deal would
in his baffled and vengeful rage have spared neither the name nor fame
of even his own mother, had occasion offered to tempt him to blacken it.
Don Rafael believed the women of his household as well as the money safe
in the hiding places he had constructed for them,—the first known to
Doña Feliz and Doña Rita, the second to himself alone. To any fate that
might befall himself he looked with stoical courage if not indifference.
Leaning against the wall, he crossed his arms defiantly and awaited
events.

                                 XXXIX.

At high noon a terrible and heartrending wail of anguish sounded through
the house, penetrating with dismal insistence through the clamor of the
soldiery and the thousand indescribable noises of the animals, which had
been hastily collected; and which added the element of mere brute
bewilderment to the scarcely more reasonably restrained terror of the
people.

Ramirez had recognized the obstinate defiance of the administrador. More
than once before he had dealt with others as tenacious of the interests
of those they served. He had no time to lose in vain persuasions, and
had himself conducted the search throughout the vast building, of which
he believed he knew every nook and corner. But he had to his amazement
and chagrin found neither treasure nor any member of the family of the
administrador save the apparently dying Doña Feliz. After a fruitless
endeavor to recall her to consciousness, he left her with a curse, and
returning to her son, assaulted him with menaces, alternated with fair
promises,—the one as little regarded as the other.

Upon one subject only would Don Rafael permit himself to speak; and to
that Ramirez, in his rage, refused to listen. The suggestion that his
daughter, if indeed he had a reason to seek one there, might prove to be
Chinita, the foster-daughter of Pedro Gomez, he received with utter
contempt. He remembered her well, he said; an imp as black as Pedro
himself,—black as he must be now, scorching in Hades. That little demon
was none of his, while Chata had the very face of his mother,—the face
of an angel. Ah! ah! that was indeed a daring jest, that Isabel should
strive to palm off upon him the brat of her doorkeeper! Once long
before, like the witch she was, the girl had stopped him and thrust into
his hand an amulet,—he drew it from his pocket, and cast it from him. By
the way, now Pedro was dead, if Rafael still believed her worth a
thought, he had better see in such a day as this that she had some other
protector. She must be nearly a woman now!

Ramirez fell into greater rage when he learned that Doña Isabel had
taken charge of this despised waif. He swore that it was in mockery of
himself; and Don Rafael soon perceiving that every word he uttered was
construed as an attempt to deceive, and fearing that at some time it
might bring evil upon the girl to whom, whether she were the daughter of
Ramirez or no, he certainly desired no harm, the administrador became
utterly silent, in his heart commending the prudence of Rita in
following this time with exactness his instructions, and condoning the
treason of which by the assurances of Ramirez he had been forced to
believe her guilty.

In truth, although at first the alarmed and not too scrupulous woman had
urged Chata to secure the safety of herself and her child by claiming
the protection of Ramirez, as time passed and he made no movement toward
such recognition she began to distrust the effect it might produce upon
the renowned guerilla. He and his soldiers were there for plunder and
rapine, not paternal sentiment. As the cries of the women-servants and
villagers reached her, the resolution to seek safety in concealment
seized her. Though still far from wishing to conceal Chata from Ramirez,
to whom the accidental sight of her might recall some sense of mercy or
tenderness, she feared both him and her husband too greatly to dare
leave her to the chance of insult from the licentious soldiery. But
Chata absolutely refused to leave Doña Feliz, from whose side even the
servants had fled; and it was her scream that had penetrated to the
rooms below, when, by the friendly force of Don Alonzo, she was immured
with Doña Rita and Rosario in the secret recess, which Don Rafael had
constructed with a vague apprehension of such an emergency.

It chanced that this recess, which was in the immensely thick outer wall
of the great house, was dimly lighted and ventilated by a loop-hole so
small as to be barely visible from without, but which opened funnel-like
toward the inside of the apartment. Through this loop-hole these three
women, whose voices were quite inaudible to those either within or
without the building, heard confusedly the village cries, and caught
uncertain glimpses of the space outside the hacienda gates. After what
seemed hours of incarceration, during which Rosario had fretted and
slept, and Doña Rita had alternately chided and lamented, while Chata
entreated to be released that she might return to the side of Doña
Feliz, they saw with anxious surprise a crowd gathering upon the sandy
slope; not of the soldiery alone, but the people of the
hacienda,—clerks, workmen, women who were wringing their hands and
uttering sharp cries of terror and entreaty, which ended in that deep
wail, which seemed to signify some agonizing catastrophe.

Doña Rita was the first to divine what was happening. “Maria Purissima!”
she cried. “Is it possible Rafael is as mad as the administrador of Los
Chalcos,—that he has refused some demand? Does he not remember how
Ramirez caused that poor foolish one to be hanged without mercy! O my
husband, my husband! Oh! has he no thought for me, for his child, that
he will sacrifice his life for Doña Isabel? How will she thank him?
Whoever thinks twice of the foolhardy obstinacy of an administrador?”

Chata sprang to her feet. “Give me the key!” she cried. “Let me go! Now
if Ramirez is my father, he shall prove it! Would he deny his daughter
the life of her foster-father? Give me the key!”

“No, no!” screamed Doña Rita, “the place is full of ruffians. Ramirez
himself is a tiger! I—” but Chata had wrenched the key from her numbed
and shaking hands, and thrusting it in the lock had turned the grating
wards.

When she rushed into the corridors they were empty,—there was a sight to
behold elsewhere. On she flew, not noticing that Doña Rita and Rosario
followed, and that their shrieks rose with hers, as in a minute or less
they reached the outer court, and strove to penetrate the throng that
filled it and extended to the village beyond.

Within the high arch of the doorway, clear against the deep blue of the
mid-day sky, swayed the figure of a man,—of Rafael Sanchez. Below, sword
in hand, stood Ramirez and two panting laborers who that instant had
accomplished his decree. Around them were gathered scores of armed men,
evil-eyed, with the ferocity of brutes in their faces; and Ramirez stood
pre-eminent, a very demon.

The crowd parted like water before the shrieks of the three women. In a
moment Chata reached the side of Ramirez, and grasped his sword. “Spare
him! spare him!” she demanded rather than entreated. “If I am your
daughter, cut the rope! Spare him, and do as you like with me; else I
swear I will die with him rather than be known as your child!”

The women were on their knees,—not Doña Rita and Rosario alone, but all
those of the village. Sobs and entreaties filled the air. Ramirez threw
a glance of triumphant admiration upon Chata, and put one arm around
her, while he raised the other, pointing with a nod to the swaying
figure.

A man sprang to cut the rope, and the administrador fell into the dozen
arms stretched out to receive him. Chata saw with infinite joy that he
was not dead. He threw up his arms, gasped, opened wide-staring eyes. A
moment later, she was hurried away. Half-fainting though she was, she
was glad to escape that embrace from which she dared not shrink.

“Ah, Rafael, you are conquered,—I have the girl! And now where is the
gold?” she heard Ramirez exclaim, and saw the gesture of defiance with
which the scarce conscious victim answered this demand.

An hour later Chata was riding by the side of the baffled Ramirez. She
knew not whether her foster-father was living or dead, and dared not
ask; but stifling her sobs, looked back through a mist of tears upon the
desolated hacienda. It was incredible even to her horrified and longing
gaze, the terrible devastation that had been worked in a few short
hours. Seemingly to complete its ruin, a thunder-cloud, which had been
lurking over the valley, discharged its contents over the devoted house.
Upon the hills the sun shone; Chata was safe from the fury of the storm.
And yet she felt as though the very wrath of heaven had burst over her.

“_Caramba_, Chatita! thou wilt make a soldier’s daughter yet!” Ramirez
was exclaiming. “By my faith, I am proud of thee!” In spite of the
unattained gold, he pressed on in rare good humor. His fury, like the
storm, was quickly expended. “And by our Lady of Glory I am glad that
you came in time to save that obstinate fool, Rafael. He has, after all
is said, served me a good turn in aiding Isabel to put what she meant
for a shabby trick upon me. _Caramba!_ It was clever of her. I should
never have discovered it but for a slip of the tongue on Rafael’s part
which no one else would have noticed, and but for thy wonderful likeness
to my mother,—the angels give her good rest!”

Chata could not be grateful for this favor of nature; it seemed to her
indeed the bitterest spite that could have been wreaked upon her. She
turned her eyes upon the face of Ramirez with a questioning glance,
which startled him: those gray eyes, limpid and clear as they were, were
far different from the large, languorous, black ones of his mother,—yet
not unfamiliar. Where had he seen such before? The inquiry was not worth
a special effort of memory. Enough that the eyes were beautiful. The
very softness and appeal in their expression held a peculiar charm for
this fierce, hard spirit. He had begun a denunciation of the revenge
practised against him by his sister, but he abruptly paused. What if
this young creature knew nothing of those wild deeds of bygone years?
Why shock her tender and immature mind by the recital of such episodes
as she would view but at their darkest? For the first time in his life
he felt the impossibility of impressing his hearer with the daring
rather than the villany of his deeds, and rode beside her in silence,
furtively watching her face, which with wonderful control, indicating a
latent strength of character, she suffered to reveal none of the horror
or fear with which he inspired her, but only the natural grief with
which she had been separated from the home of her childhood.

Indeed, the thought of Doña Feliz was the dominant one in Chata’s mind,
and prevented any serious grief or alarm as to her own situation. The
question of her own safety or future position troubled her little. It
was the fact of her separation from the beloved and stricken friend, who
was so dependent upon her care, and her absolute horror of the murderer
of the American,—for as such Ramirez ever figured in her thoughts,—which
rendered it so difficult a task for her to retain her self-possession
and answer with calmness the few questions or remarks that were from
time to time addressed to her.

Chata soon perceived that as the day wore on, and she began to exhibit
signs of fatigue from the hurried march and the heat, her presence
caused far more anxiety than triumph to her captor. “The old folly!” he
muttered from time to time,—“to act without counting the cost. I doubt
whether there is a decent woman among this drove of camp-followers. If I
had but thought to bring one from the hacienda! In fact, it was a fool’s
act to bring the child at all, with such work before me as I have!”

Chata caught these broken sentences with a wild hope that he might
decree her return to Tres Hermanos. Willingly would she have risked
going alone on foot if necessary. But the sun set, the shades of evening
closed in, and the hurried march was still pursued, until, when she was
ready to faint with fatigue, the General ordered a halt, and lifting her
from the saddle, placed her upon a pile of blankets; while a half-dozen
men set to work with practised hands to build a little hut or tent of
mesquite and manzanita boughs to shelter her from the night air.

As the weary girl sat near the tent fire, endeavoring to eat the food of
which she stood in much need, but for which she could not force an
appetite, she found herself the centre of a wild horde of perhaps nearly
five hundred persons, of whom a fifth were women and children, who were
busy at the fires preparing the evening meal while the men were staking
horses, or patrolling the circle of the camp, keeping within bounds the
hard-driven and panting cattle and sheep, whose distressing lowing and
bleating at intervals filled the air. Apparently there was an entire
lack of discipline, the unreasoning enthusiasm of the moment and the
personal magnetism of the renowned leader serving to hold the unruly
elements subservient to the necessities of the occasion, and obedient to
his slightest mandate. The majority of the troops were of the most wild
and even savage appearance; for, as their leader had said, they were the
riff-raff, the scourings of the mountain villages and remote farms.
Chata was not unaccustomed to the sight of such individuals, but in mass
the impression they made upon her was of concentrated evil. The trace of
gentler feeling that each face or person might have revealed on scrutiny
was lost in the prevailing ferocity of expression and accoutrement. The
clash of arms, the jingle of spurs, the hoarse voices made her shudder
no less than the sullen faces, the gleaming eyes, and the sinewy and
powerful frames.

Strangely enough, as her eyes followed Ramirez, a sense of his complete
harmony with his surroundings seemed in the girl’s mind to condone the
wild deeds of which he had figured as the hero. She realized for the
first time the fascination that unlimited power over such elements must
exercise over a mind given to daring, and uncontrolled by any moral
principle. She thought of Chinita, and how her adventurous spirit would
have exulted in such an adventure as this. As she gazed into the fire
the very face of that fearless, enigmatic young nature seemed to rise
before her, beautiful, passionate, yet with that capacity of endurance,
which in a man might become cruelty, that capricious changeableness,
which one moment dissolved in tears, and the next shone in a smile. So
real was the vision that Chata started, and found herself gazing
affrightedly into the face of Ramirez, who was regarding her with the
expression of mingled affection, triumph, and vexation which had not
left his countenance since he had set her upon Doña Rita’s favorite
horse at the door of the hacienda.

“I have a notable project in my mind for you,” he said abruptly. “You
know that I am the Governor of Guanapila.”

“Yes,” she said timidly; “but I thought—” she hesitated, fearing to
offend.

“Ah, you thought I was beaten and barred out. They will find I am
neither one nor the other. The gate is shut but not bolted, and it will
be hard if I find not a way to creep in. It is impossible for me to keep
you with me on the march. You must be with some woman.”

“Oh, I would rather be with you. Indeed I will give no trouble! I will
be brave!” she exclaimed, instinctively shrinking from the thought of
contact with such women as she saw around her.

He smiled with gratification, his egotistic nature flattered by the
thought that he was gaining her confidence; but his face darkened as she
added with hesitation, “I had hoped—I thought perhaps you were taking me
to my mother.”

“It is not of your mother I was thinking,” he said ambiguously, “when I
spoke of Guanapila, but of my niece Carmen de Velasquez. She knows that
the General Ramirez once sent an escort with her mother to Tres
Hermanos, and levied upon her husband for a loan of ten thousand dollars
when he might have had five times as much,—for the old fellow she has
married is rich, and does honor to the financial acumen of the fair
Carmen, and we will see whether she has a just appreciation of the
favors I am supposed to have rendered her. There, go to your tent and
sleep in peace; in three days you shall be safe within the house of
Velasquez in Guanapila.”

It cannot be said that Chata slept in peace; yet the prospect was
reassuring, and enabled her to bear with resignation the fatigues and
excitements of the following days, and the loneliness and terrors of the
nights. The General slept before the opening of her tent. Upon the
fourth night he awoke her, and handed her a torn and shabby reboso and a
skirt of coarse red cloth, with instructions to put them on. She did so
with some repugnance, though the clothing she left was not better; and
at a call stepped out into the starlight. The young Captain Alva
preceded her in silence outside the limits of the camp, where two horses
were in waiting, held by a man whom at the first startled glance she
failed to recognize. It would have horrified her beyond control had she
known that in his size and air and dress he was the image of the
ranchero who had entered Tres Hermanos on the night of the murder, years
before. She uttered a cry of relief as Ramirez greeted her.

“Ah, is it not a perfect disguise?” he said. “Why, I might go into El
Toro itself with impunity! Mount, child, and keep close at my side!”

In a minute or less, with the assistance of Alva, Chata was ready for
the start,—her courage rising with the sense of mystery and daring under
which Ramirez seemed to glow and expand. He paused to give his last
commands to Alva, of which she heard only the concluding words: “Reyes
should be here by daylight. Keep him at all hazards, for he must sound
Ruiz before another day passes. _Caramba!_ I cannot believe that fellow
has failed me; but whether or no, the end will be the same,—except that
I swear if Ruiz prove false, were he twice my godson he shall not escape
my vengeance.”

The General pulled his hat over his eyes, waved his hand, struck the
spurs into his horse, and led the way at a swift canter. Chata until
within the last few days had never ridden on horseback; but she was
singularly free from fear or awkwardness, and with ease, though in
silence, kept at his side.

“Chata,” Ramirez once said abruptly, turning his dark and piercing eyes
upon her, “I am risking much for your sake. Remember that you are my
daughter. Be faithful to me, obey my bidding, and I will cherish you as
the apple of my eye. It may depend upon you whether the troops of Doña
Isabel follow my lead or that of Gonzales. You will know my meaning
later; but I swear to you, as I have done by Ruiz, my vengeance shall
rest upon whomsoever balks me,—yes, if it is even you, the newfound
daughter whom I love.”

Chata trembled. Though his words were an enigma, they indicated that her
_rôle_ was not to be an utterly passive one. Her companion awaited no
answer, and Chata did not attempt to make one. They rode on at ever
increasing speed as the night advanced. Just at daybreak they reached a
hut, which was placed at the mouth of a cañon. There they left their
horses, and an old woman appeared with a crate of turkeys in each hand,
one of which she gave to the disguised chieftain, the other to the
wondering Chata.

An hour later they were in the streets of Guanapila, and before they had
broken their fast Chata sat overcome with fatigue and dismay upon the
stone stairs that led to the corridor of a palatial residence. The
ranchero, as the servants supposed him, had gone to speak with the lady
of the mansion. It was a long time before he re-appeared; and when he
did, a beautiful woman preceded him. She was very pale, and there was in
her eyes an incredulous and startled expression, which changed to pity
as her gaze fell upon Chata,—who, looking up, thought of the pale and
lovely face she had seen but once, and knew she must be in the presence
of Carmen, the sister of the nun of El Toro.

Ramirez whispered a word in the ear of the bewildered girl, it might be
of warning or of farewell; but her senses failed her,—she neither saw
nor heard more.

“Go, go!” cried the mistress of the house. “For God’s sake go, before
there is any one to wonder. Whether your tale be true or false, she has
the face of a Garcia, and a loveliness and sweetness of her own. I will
guard her as though she were my child. Go, go! and the saints grant you
a safe passage. I will not betray your confidence. Ah, she has fainted!
I will manage that; it shall be my pretext for charity.”

Ramirez kissed the hand of the unconscious Chata, and turned away. For
once he had executed an act of extreme self-denial, yet amid it all his
crafty mind foresaw how he might use it to his advantage.

The exit from the city was readily effected, but Ramirez did not proceed
many miles unrecognized after mounting his horse at the hut where he had
left it. The man who spoke his name unhesitatingly, though in a cautious
voice, was Reyes. He gave the General unwelcome tidings. Gonzales had
joined forces with those of Tres Hermanos. He had risked the attack and
occupation of El Toro, and it was conjectured would attempt the march to
the Capital itself, round which the audacious Juarez was from his
stronghold in Vera Cruz directing the concentration of the Liberal
forces.

Ramirez ground his teeth in rage. “I have been delayed and hampered by
that girl,” he cried. “Could I but have gone straight to Ruiz, he would
not have dared defy me. As it is—”

“As it is,” interrupted Reyes, “all is not yet lost. I have still to see
Ruiz,—he is not my son if it is impossible to convince him upon which
hot plate the cake is best toasted.”

The conference of the two men lasted but a few moments. They had been so
accustomed in their long intercourse to treat of subjects of which one
was as well informed as the other, and upon the course to be taken at
the present time they were so well agreed, that they parted with no
attempt at explanation, but simply after a few words of instruction had
been given by Ramirez to the other.

“Tell him,” the chief said finally, “I am ready to fulfil my word; and
if Ruiz be anxious to see her, let him risk as much for love as I have
done. She is at the house of Doña Carmen Velasquez in Guanapila; and
tell him as surely as he is my godson and your son he shall be shot as a
traitor if he fails me in this affair. Good-by for a time; good news or
bad news, my blood is up for a desperate venture now. It cannot be that
after all these years luck is turning against me at last.”

“It did that years ago when you stabbed the American,” thought Reyes as
they parted; “it was that that weighted the scale. That accursed
foreigner who is here to avenge him has upset all our plans for
misleading Gonzales. With both together Ramirez has fearful odds against
him, which even with the help of Ruiz and his men he may find it hard to
combat. But how in heaven’s name has the General his daughter with him?
_Caramba!_ I have often wondered how he would relish that drunken freak
of mine! Faith, I did not care to try his temper to-night by many
questions. Well, who would have thought he would have kept in the same
mind for so many years! To think of his striving to give her the family
training at this late date! Ah, ah, ah! it is more likely to mar than to
make her. If Fernando is of my mind he will wait in such a matter for no
pruning and training, but pluck the flower while it is within his reach,
thorns and all.”

With which poetic simile, Tio Reyes rode on well pleased on his errand
to the young Ruiz, while Ramirez, proceeding rapidly in the opposite
direction, regained within the hour his enthusiastic but disorderly
horde.

XL.

Vain would be the attempt to describe the consternation of Doña Isabel
when she awoke at early dawn, and felt about her that peculiar
stillness—a stillness that seems absolutely tangible—which indicates the
abstraction of the element of humanity from the associations about us,
and is especially impressive when that loss is utterly unexpected.

It was not yet daylight, and it was by this peculiar stillness, and not
by sight, that Doña Isabel learned with a deadly feeling of dismay at
her heart, that she was alone. For a moment she lay silent, then raising
herself on her elbow sought to peer through the gloom, while with
faltering voice she uttered the name “Chinita.”

There was no answer. She would have been inexpressibly surprised had
there been; and yet refusing to be convinced, she arose from her bed and
made her way to that of Chinita. Had the girl been there, in the
infinite relief and excitement of the moment the lady must have clasped
her in her arms with kisses and tears; as it was, after passing her
hands wildly over the empty couch, she sank upon it with a deep and
bitter moan, feeling anew, and with the intensified agony of
remembrance, the shock with which she had heard the cry of Herlinda,—“My
husband! My husband!” What but a like betrayal could in that place and
time have drawn a young girl from her chamber? Alas! alas!

The thoughts of Doña Isabel flew to Ruiz; a thousand trifles, unheeded
before, crowded her remembrance as confirmation of some secret
understanding between him and Chinita. If she had noticed them at all it
was to think with a smile that they had reference to Rosario. How had
she been so blind! She sprang to her feet and hastily dressed herself
with some undefined intention of seeking him in his quarters, and
demanding an explanation of him if he were to be found, or of confirming
her worst fears if he had fled. All her old distrust of him, which he
had so skilfully lulled, returned with overwhelming force, and in her
unfounded suspicion she included the more just one of treason to her
purposes to the cause of liberty and to Gonzales, and with irresistible
certainty became convinced that the delays and detours which Ruiz had
made had been expedients of traitorous policy. In the few moments needed
for the completion of her toilet, a terrible fear took possession of
her. For the first time that night she had been separated from the main
body of the troops,—what if she were abandoned! Nothing seemed more
likely. Only the great self-possession that she habitually practised
prevented her from rushing out—yes, even into the streets of the
village—to satisfy herself that the rude encampment remained unbroken.

Yet with all this raging excitement of grief and doubt within her, she
presently stepped out upon the corridor with that stately calmness which
she ever wore before the world, were it represented by but the meanest
peasant. Day had scarcely broken, yet there was a sound of movement
unusual in so small a place. To the excited mind of Doña Isabel it
appeared that like herself the people all must be searching wildly for
the girl who had so strangely escaped her. She went to the inn door and
looked out. The camp-women were wandering through the streets already,
chaffering and bargaining with the vendors of milk and bread and
vegetables. In the distance she saw the soldiers preparing for the
march. Three or four officers were lounging down the narrow street. To
her infinite surprise and relief she saw among them Ruiz. He hastened
his steps and joined her with an air of consternation, which even in her
excitement she noticed had in it a subdued suggestion of apprehension as
of one detected in some doubtful act.

In a few words Doña Isabel apprised him of the disappearance of Chinita.
It was impossible that it could be concealed; it was absolutely
necessary that search should be made. Ruiz listened with an emotion
greater even than hers. “Good heavens, Señora!” he cried, “we are
undone. Ramirez must be at hand. In some way she has learned his
whereabouts; she has fled to him!”

Doña Isabel thought Ruiz had suddenly gone mad. “Fled to Ramirez!” she
cried. “Impossible! What can she know of the man? What object can she
have in seeking him?”

Instinctively the lady had led the way back to the room she had left.
Ruiz followed her, in the utter demoralization of his mind at the
unexpected tidings, pouring out incoherent explanations of the designs
that Chinita had cherished, and unconsciously revealing much of the
duplicity of the part he had himself acted. With an acuteness of mind
perhaps intensified by the keen emotion with which she listened to the
unexpected accusations against the young girl, Doña Isabel conjectured
at once that the speaker had played a double part; and it was a not
improbable solution of the mystery of Chinita’s disappearance, that in
discovering this the young girl had resolved to precipitate a crisis in
the fate of the man who exercised so unaccountable a fascination over
her.

Yet with whom had she fled? Had Ramirez himself stolen into the inn and
borne her away? The face of Ruiz blanched at this suggestion. Had the
girl learned what was indeed a fact, that upon that very day the troops
of Doña Isabel Garcia were by their officers to protest against a
further attempt to reach Gonzales, and declaring Ruiz their chosen and
permanent leader were at once to take up the march to join the forces of
General Ortega, a newly arisen and popular Liberal chieftain who was a
personal and implacable enemy of Ramirez,—thus leaving El Toro to its
fate? Had Chinita indeed gone with such news to Ramirez? Ruiz felt that
his doom was sealed, for he rightly conjectured that the excitement of
Chinita’s disappearance had already dampened the ardor in his behalf
which he had found it a slow and almost impossible task to awaken among
the troops. Indeed, that it had been roused at all was owing to the
discontent which had arisen through the cleverly concealed tactics he
had used in contriving so long and monotonous a march to the aid of a
man but little known or admired, and from the general belief in the love
of the beautiful _protégée_ of Doña Isabel for the young aspirant for
fame. In her hand the favor of Doña Isabel was supposed to lie. Eager
for action, eager for booty, brought to a point where they were almost
within sound of the bugles of General Ortega, who was making his hurried
and triumphant march to the capital, it had been decided that upon that
very morning a _pronunciamento_ should be made, which, while involving
no change of politics, should compel the consent of Doña Isabel to the
apparently spontaneous outburst of patriotism upon the part of her
troops, and confirm Ruiz in the command that she had temporarily
confided to him.

Ruiz had so cunningly planned every detail that he doubted not that not
only Doña Isabel, but Chinita as well, would be convinced of his entire
ignorance of the _coup_, and that the girl’s ambition, and perhaps a
somewhat malicious satisfaction in the reversal of the plans of Doña
Isabel, would lead her to an acceptance of the apparently unavoidable
forfeiture of her own desires.

To this end the ambitious young officer had been patiently working since
the day he had found himself at the head of the troops of Tres Hermanos.
He had been amazed at his own success. Everything had seemed to
contribute to it. Not even the triumph of seeing himself actually
attracting the good-will, if not the love, of Chinita had been denied
him; and now at the moment least expected, at the most critical
juncture, she had failed him. It was impossible for him to assume his
usual self-sufficient air as he re-issued from the apartment of Doña
Isabel,—an air that imposed on the majority of observers as that of a
man conscious of power, rather than as a disguise of incompetency. His
crest-fallen bearing as he gave the necessary orders for scouts to be
sent out in search of those who in the night must have left the
ill-guarded town was evident to the most careless eye, and did much to
increase the feeling of distrust and coldness that was already beginning
to supplant the ill-considered ardor of a few hours before.

The scouts had been despatched; and the main body of the troops waited
for marching orders, which were long delayed. Ruiz, closeted with the
men who had been most amenable to his reasoning, urged openly the
arguments that he had but covertly suggested before. That exhausted
apathy which following an exploded project is far more hopeless than
that which, merely unignited, precedes its agitation, resisted all his
efforts at revival. The officers, like the soldiers, listlessly waited
to hear what would happen next, absolutely indifferent to Ruiz, and
concerned for the moment in a mere matter of gossip,—the escapade of a
young girl.

Toward noon some of the messengers returned. Most of them had nothing to
report, but the vaquero Gabriel, the husband of Juana, as soon as he
could escape the questioning of Ruiz, disappeared. An hour later he
entered the apartment of Doña Isabel.

“What news, Gabriel, what news?” the lady cried excitedly. “Did you come
upon any trace of—of the child; of those who have stolen her away?”

The vaquero shook his head, and Doña Isabel groaned. Those few hours had
wrought a terrible change in her appearance. She was not young and able
to meet shocks of disaster as she had been when they had shaken her in
by-gone years.

“I found no trace of them, my Señora,” said the man, slowly. “Perhaps my
eyes are not as keen as they were, and they say when one thinks much one
sees little. Since I am married I find one must think. A woman gives one
abundance for thought. She grinds care for a man more surely than corn
for his bread.”

Doña Isabel looked up at him quickly. She knew that this oracular
sentence had some bearing on the subject that absorbed her thoughts.
“Speak,” she said. “What has your wife to do with this?”

“She was the playmate of the young Señorita,” he suggested.

“True, but what of that?”

“She would be likely to be in her confidence,—at least where there was
no other to trust.”

Doña Isabel started, looking at him with fixed attention.

“The thought came to me as I rode out of the town,—it came back to me
again and again. After hours of vain search I suffered myself to be
convinced. I came back and taxed Juana with knowing with whom, and when
and where, her friend had gone.”

“Well?” ejaculated Doña Isabel, in extreme agitation.

“She denied it. By all the saints she denied it; but I had a saint she
had forgotten to commend herself to.” He smiled significantly.

Doña Isabel understood the arguments used by rancheros to refractory
wives too well to doubt what his grim jest meant. At another time she
would have indignantly dismissed from her presence the man who admitted
laying a hand in castigation upon his wife; now she merely by an
imperative gesture urged him to finish what he had to communicate.

“It was as I thought,” he said coolly. “Two men talked with her last
night. The one was Juana’s brother, Pepé; the other was the Señor
Americano your grace knows of.”

Doña Isabel sank back in her chair as if struck by a sharp weapon. “The
American! the American!” she repeated again and again. She felt as
though a hand had been thrust from the grave to torture her. The
superstitious dread which had been planted in her breast by the first
glimpse of the face of Ashley Ward, and which had perhaps led her
irresistibly to a course that the resolution of years would under
ordinary circumstances have rendered impossible to a nature as tenacious
as was her own, became a horrible certainty. Evil fate in the guise of
the American appeared to pursue her. Whatever the purpose with which he
had lured Chinita from her side, it could but be productive of woe for
her. Would the tale of her daughter’s shame and her own apparent
heartlessness be told throughout the land? Had this pale and seemingly
spiritless young man resolved on such a vengeance of his cousin’s
fancied wrongs? Or—worse still—was this but a repetition of the old, old
tale of passion and folly? Doña Isabel covered her face with her hand
and groaned again.

Gabriel had called his wife to the room, and she came with eyes red with
weeping, and told the tale that seemed to her best. Fearful of bringing
the vengeance of the Señora upon Pepé, should she avow that he had left
the inn alone with Chinita, she declared he had but accompanied the
American, whom she boldly affirmed had set out for the coast, with the
young girl, intending to set sail for the wild country whence he had
come.

Doña Isabel and Gabriel both knew too well the inventive genius of their
countrywomen literally to believe all she said; yet as hour after hour
passed by and no news of the fugitives was heard, and no trace of them
in spite of the most untiring search was found, they were at length led
to conclude—the one with despair—that Juana’s words were true, and that
the brief connection of the beautiful foster-child of Pedro Gomez with
the lady of Tres Hermanos was ended forever.

                                  XLI.

Never perhaps did so marked a change occur in the discipline and
carriage of any body of troops, from a cause apparently so slight, as
that which followed the flight of Chinita. Of the visit of the American
nothing was publicly known, but the wildest rumors of her probable
action ran like wildfire through the ranks, the name of Ramirez coupled
with her own being on every tongue. So potent was the fame of the
guerilla chieftain and the fascination of Chinita, that a word from her
at that excited moment would have acted like fire on straw, and set a
blaze to the smouldering insubordination and disappointed energies of
the baffled and impatient recruits, who had entered upon the service
from love of adventure and booty rather than with any fixed convictions
or an intelligent conception of the interests at stake.

Doña Isabel wore before the world the same impassive face as ever, but
at night the demon powers of remorse and intolerable anxiety wrought
cruel havoc with its beauty. It was impossible too for her to conceal
utterly the suspicion and distrust with which Ruiz inspired her; and the
influence which through Chinita mainly he had for a brief period
acquired, both over Doña Isabel and the troops, and which at best had
been looked upon as a privilege he should yield later with his authority
to Gonzales, began to wane rapidly. Dissatisfaction and mutinous
threatenings were manifested on every hand, and the position of Ruiz but
for the presence of Doña Isabel would have been absolutely untenable;
and a crisis was evidently imminent, when the long desired leader
suddenly appeared to relieve the tension of the situation, and to awaken
a frenzy of enthusiasm for the cause, which had been at the point of
abandonment.

It was with intense relief that Ruiz himself greeted the appearance of
Gonzales, unexpected though it was, and incomprehensible the means by
which he had obtained information that had led him so completely to
alter his plans. That the American was concerned in the matter Ruiz did
not doubt, though he could imagine no clew to his motives, the
conviction being still in the mind of the baffled officer of Chinita’s
indifference to Ashley, and of her flight to Ramirez.

It was with amazement and alarm that Gonzales witnessed the ravages of
time and care upon the once beautiful and stately Doña Isabel. The very
excess of joy with which she welcomed him seemed weak and pitiful. He
had been detained long upon the way from El Toro by a series of petty
annoyances, such as the bad state of the roads and a succession of
trifling skirmishes with the enemy, resulting in burdening the march
with the care of the wounded; and thus the loss of Chinita had become to
Doña Isabel by the time of his arrival an assured fact. With tears of
anguish she told him of the ingratitude of the child she loved, though
she carefully concealed the fact that she supposed her to be other than
one of the class of people from whom she had taken her; and with this
explanation only Gonzales could not enter fully into her grief, or
accept the fact that the loss of her _protégée_ was indeed the entire
cause of her anguish. Had she not mourned for years as he had the living
entombment of her daughter Herlinda? Had not the sight of him revived in
her mind the keenness of her woe?

Doña Isabel was ill both in body and in mind; worn out with anxiety and
the fatigues of travel, the reaction occasioned by the appearance of
Gonzales was doubtless too great for her enfeebled powers. To his
extreme embarrassment and anxiety he found himself charged with the
unexpected responsibility of the care of a lady of much social
consequence, and one personally extremely dear to him, who was stricken
with an illness that demanded the most efficient attendance and complete
isolation from disturbing influences. Added to the present necessity of
gaining the confidence of the disorganized troops, and of continuing the
march with the most unrelaxing vigilance, the situation thus became most
onerous to the young commander,—not the less so because of the presence
of a man he had thwarted and displaced, and whom it was necessary to
keep in view and perhaps conciliate.

Upon the next night after the arrival of Gonzales, when Ruiz with
seeming cordiality though with relief and rage contending in his mind
had yielded his command, he strode to the outskirts of the camp, and
smoking or rather forgetting to smoke a cigarette, mentally reviewed
with bitter disappointment the perplexing and conflicting events that
had led to so utter an overthrowal of his carefully concocted schemes.
With the rapidity and excitement of his thoughts, his pace increased as
though he was striving to tread down his mortification while he was
preparing therefor a speedy and certain revenge.

The thought of this was chiefly directed toward Chinita. But for her
flight Ruiz doubted not his position would have been so firmly assured
that he would have been enabled to carry out his schemes. Thus he had
hoped to find himself at the head of a force which in the event of final
victory would have recommended him to the highest honors in the gift of
Juarez, or at any rate assured him against the vengeance of Ramirez. To
treachery time had added actual hatred of the man who had befriended
him, and whose evil deeds, while he professed to abhor them, he would
have rejoiced to have courage and address to imitate, and of whom he
still held a superstitious dread, which had once been absolute awe.

It maddened the recreant follower of Ramirez to think of Chinita in the
power of such a man. That day the last wild escapade of the lawless
adventurer, the torture of Pedro, had in some way reached the ears of
Ruiz and destroyed a lingering hope he had cherished that the girl,
proud and hard though he believed her, had in some impulse of affection
gone to her foster-father,—a thought that he had not even hinted to Doña
Isabel, for with petty spite he refrained from uttering that which he
imagined might give relief to her long agony. He imagined how Chinita,
who doubtless had seen through his double dealing, would make it
contemptible by her scorn, and ridiculous with her irony; and how
Ramirez would, after listening to her account of him rise his sworn
enemy: Ruiz had witnessed such scenes. No; return to Ramirez was
impossible. Besides, that chieftain’s ultimate defeat was certain: the
Liberal cause was strengthening every hour. Ramirez must have lost his
former keenness to follow thus a losing venture. Ruiz began to console
himself by thoughts of how, though only in a subordinate part, he should
assist in the discomfiture of the proud general and that of the girl who
loved him,—for the ignoble youth was incapable of believing hers to be
the love of a mere unreasoning child, though to a purer heart her words
would have a thousand times declared her enthusiasm to be but a
fanatical admiration, untouched by a tinge of passion. The maddening
jealousy that had raged in the heart of Ruiz since he had learned of the
flight of Chinita, and had rendered him incapable of a sustained effort
to renew the ambitious projects so fatally shaken, now flamed up with
cruel intensity; and yet he loved her. At that moment he would have
liked to throttle her, yet would have recalled her to life with words of
passionate love and burning kisses.

As he pondered, he struck his breast with his clinched hand.
“_Caramba!_” he muttered, “is all lost? Is there no way to overset this
miserable favorite of the Señora? Maria Sanctissima! who is that?” His
hand like a flash passed to his pistol.

“Hist!” said a voice. “It is I, Fernando. I have not a moment to spare.
I have tried to gain a way to thee for an hour or more. I know all that
has passed. Fool! thou shouldst have raised the battle-cry for Ramirez
before this Gonzales reached thee; there were men with thee who would
have sustained thee well!”

“Bah! a man has opinions,” answered Ruiz, coolly, recognizing the voice;
“and if Ramirez still chooses to fight for the priests, that is no
argument for my being as mad. I tell you plainly, Father, I am tired of
playing a boy’s part; you will hear of me yet as something more than the
lieutenant of Gonzales.”

“Big words, big words,” laughed Tio Reyes. “Now listen to that which I
have to say to you;” and leaning from his saddle in a few concise words
he delivered the message of Ramirez, adding a few paternal injunctions
as to the conduct Ruiz should in future observe.

“Up to this time nothing is lost,” he continued; “in truth had you acted
in good faith, no course could have been better save this last step,—but
that may easily be recalled. Ramirez will soon be prepared to attack
Gonzales in force; his mind was set on regaining El Toro, but that can
be deferred. ‘When the loaf is cut the crumbs may be soon eaten!’ Be you
prepared to pass over to your rightful commander at the last moment with
all your men. The rest of the troop will follow like sheep. Bah! what is
the name of Gonzales to that of Ramirez! With the forces we could then
combine, what might we not attempt! I promise you in the name of
Ramirez, on his honor as a soldier and his faith as your godfather, a
free pardon for all that has passed. _Caramba_, man! I can’t imagine how
you could have been so mad. I have seen the girl who has bewitched you,
and by my faith I thought her nothing more than any other brown chit,
save that her eyes were darker and bigger than most, and her tongue
sharper than a man cares to find between his wife’s lips! What, you
hesitate? You believe Ramirez at the bottom of a pit, and the pit dry?
Fool! He has treasure you know nothing of; and as for men, did the
mountain villages ever fail him?—and you know how many may be counted on
here. _Caramba_, try them! Tell them he has sacked Tres Hermanos.”

“I know it,” said Ruiz, thoughtfully, “and doubtless the booty was
great!”

Reyes shrugged his shoulders but did not contradict him, reiterating
again and again the assurances of the favor of Ramirez in the event of
Ruiz’s acceptance of his proposals, and on the contrary the chief’s
determination to wreak an awful vengeance upon his god-child should he
prove obdurate and attempt to carry to injurious lengths the treacherous
intrigues which he had designed against his benefactor.

Ruiz vehemently denied his guilt, yet hesitated to make promises which,
whether kept or broken, might make still more dubious his future
position. Reyes read his mind, and at length said coolly,—

“The fact is, you have been bred a servant of Ramirez. When I swore the
service of my life to him, yours went with it. You are the one creature
in the world he has never met with a frown or given a harsh word to; but
do you think he will spare you for that? No; if you should fall into his
hands as a traitor, which sooner or later you would be sure to do, you
would be shot! Yes, like a dog,—” and the speaker spat on the ground to
emphasize his contempt. “But if you are reasonable he will forget all
that has passed,—more than I would do in his place I can tell you; ay,
he will even give you his daughter.”

“His daughter!” echoed Ruiz with a sneer.

“On my soul, you must be hard to please,” cried his father. “For the
girl’s sake I was sorry enough he killed the fool of a gatekeeper five
days ago. For all her proud ways, she loved him like a child,—more than
she will love Ramirez though he is her father, when she hears of this
mad deed.”

Ruiz sprang to his side. “What do you mean?” he cried, seizing his arm.
“Is Chinita the daughter of Ramirez? Is she with him? Is she indeed the
girl who has been promised to me for these years and years? _Por Dios_,
what would I not do for her? What would I not dare? But I do not believe
it. Ramirez knows I love her; this is but a deception. Ah, I know him
too well!”

Reyes laughed. “He told me if you were not satisfied you might go and
see for yourself. Faith, he had no thought you loved her already. I met
him on the road as he came back from leaving her. Does that surprise
you? He is a careful father; she is in the house of the Señora’s
daughter, Doña Carmen.”

Ruiz seemed stunned. Reyes saw that his point was gained, and uttered
but a few words more, which elicited only the response,—“Ramirez’s
daughter? Wonderful, wonderful! And after all, she will be mine.
Heavens! how can I live a day longer without seeing her? Commend me to
the Señor General. You know, my father, my heart is good, though my
brain may have erred! Tell me, has she said but one good word for me?
She—”

“Enough!” cried Reyes, laughing the more. “I have not seen her, I tell
thee; and if thou wouldst know what she thinks, find a pretext and see
her at Doña Carmen’s house. It was a strange freak of the General’s to
take her there, but a happy one. Thou shalt not be molested on the way,
I promise thee. But I have no further time for talking. Adios! thou art
the only man I have ever seen whom love has brought to his right senses.
It will be well if thou art as sane a year after the wedding!”

The two men embraced, in the fashion of the country, and with an ardor
on the part of Ruiz that he seldom affected.

“_Caramba!_ the father is a man of a thousand,” he muttered to himself
as he watched him disappear, guiding his horse so deftly that not a
sound broke the silence of the night. “Virgin of consolation!” he
continued, as he walked slowly back to his quarters. “This is like a
dream. Plague upon it! That is the fault of my father; he is always in
haste. I would have asked him a thousand questions, had he given me but
a quarter of an hour. But it is of Chinita herself I will ask them.
Surely she must have shown some favor toward me, or my godfather would
not recommend me to her with such confidence. _Santo Niño_, show me some
way to make it possible to steal into Guanapila and exchange a word with
her!”

The curiosity of the young man as much as his love prompted the latter
aspiration. His suspicion of the identity of Ramirez with the brother of
Doña Isabel, the Leon Vallé so long supposed dead, returned to him with
force; but he longed to know whether the secret of her birth had been
conveyed to Chinita, and how her flight had been contrived. He pictured
her then like a bird in a cage beating herself against the iron bars of
Doña Carmen’s windows. That was not what she had hoped for when she had
talked to him of Ramirez. If she had tolerated him before, would he not
now be doubly dear, as one who should liberate her from the natural
restraints of a maiden’s life?

Ruiz forgot his fancied wrongs in an intoxication of delight. Constant
pondering upon the question how he should manage to evade the vigilance
and suspicions of Gonzales and effect a visit to Guanapila kept him
preoccupied, yet feverishly alert, until the increased indisposition of
Doña Isabel brought about what appeared to him a special interposition
in his behalf, and in pleading for the aid of “Our Lady of the
Impossible” he promised her in pious gratitude a candle of enormous
proportions.

To reach a point where he might leave his generous but failing friend
had become the most earnest desire of Gonzales. But its fulfilment had
seemed an impossibility, for from the time he assumed command of the
troops almost hourly news had been brought to him of gatherings of bands
of Conservatives, which promised to offer formidable resistance to any
movement he might make; and until Doña Isabel was safety disposed of, he
desired at almost any risk to avoid an open collision.

The march had slowly proceeded, and so constantly had Gonzales been
occupied, and so serious became the condition of Doña Isabel, that there
was but little conversation between them, and somewhat to his impatience
that on her part had been limited to a few brief sentences of warning
against Ruiz and constant inquiries for Chinita, and entreaties that
search should be made for her in every direction.

Gonzales, as far as was possible, had obeyed these inopportune requests;
but the anxiety and grief that prompted them seemed to him strained and
unnatural, though he could not doubt after due inquiry made that the
lost girl was of remarkable beauty and of an original and fascinating
character. Still, his knowledge of the class whence he supposed her
sprung had made quite credible to him the generally accepted theory of
her flight. Yet he started when Doña Isabel had mentioned the American
as her probable companion or instigator, adding in a low voice, “Twice
an American has robbed him.” What did she mean? His cheek flushed as he
remembered that it had been said that for love of the murdered Ashley,
Herlinda had taken the veil. And had Doña Isabel dreamed that he would
find consolation after so many years in this beautiful peasant girl whom
she had raised from the dust? Gonzales silently resented the
insinuation. Yet none the less the suggestion of the complicity of the
American in her disappearance haunted and vexed him. He did not tell
Doña Isabel that to Ward he owed the definite news of the approach of
reinforcements, and that he had virtually left him in charge of El Toro,
and that the commission from Juarez for which the foreigner had applied
had already doubtless reached him. Had he betrayed this young girl,—the
_protégée_ of Doña Isabel,—in spite of his zeal in his service the
American should have much to answer for to him. A few weeks would decide
all. He preferred to wait patiently the development of affairs, and
refrained from perplexing further the mind of Doña Isabel.

Meanwhile the condition of the lady had become rapidly worse. Perhaps
she had brought from Tres Hermanos the germs of the disease that during
these very days was working such terrible havoc there; perhaps the long
days and nights of exertion, anxiety, and grief had produced it,—but
certain it is that as the position of Gonzales became more critical, so
the imminent danger of Doña Isabel increased. A desperate evil commands
a desperate remedy. So it was at length decided that an effort should be
made to convey the lady to the city of Guanapila, to the house of her
daughter Doña Carmen; and Ruiz, in the utter impossibility that Gonzales
found of personally conducting the party, was permitted to execute the
delicate and important trust.

With an apparent readiness of resource and disregard of danger, which
commended him greatly to the perplexed General, Ruiz himself had
proposed the measure.

Taking the precaution to send with him men from Tres Hermanos only, and
such as he knew to be warmly devoted to their mistress, Gonzales acceded
to the plans of the wily young officer, and despatched him upon the
important and seemingly dangerous mission.

After the separation of the detailed party from the main body,
skirmishing parties began upon the latter frequent and harassing
attacks, and the suspicions of Gonzales were again aroused by the
impunity which Ruiz enjoyed, yet alternated with fears for his ultimate
safety. He could scarcely believe that knowing it to be in their power
to secure so rich a prize as Doña Isabel, the hungry forces of the
clergy would suffer her to escape, unless indeed Ruiz was himself as
false as he had once suspected. Again and again he reproached himself
for yielding to the apparent frankness and loyalty of the man he had at
first distrusted, and with an anxiety which grew into actual torture he
awaited the outcome of the action which circumstances against his will
and judgment had forced upon him.

Ruiz, unmolested, made his way as rapidly as the condition of his charge
permitted toward Guanapila. He comprehended well the circumstances which
were distracting the mind of Gonzales. These constant though petty
attacks he knew from information sent by Reyes were destined to weaken
the prestige of Gonzales by a series of petty misadventures, after which
his destruction by the desertion of Ruiz, followed by the mass of the
disaffected, might, it was conjectured, be readily accomplished. It
seemed the simplest matter in the world to effect, and had been
instantly agreed to by Ruiz in the hasty conference with his father. Yet
further reflection gave him an unaccountable antipathy to the course he
was to pursue. It cannot be said that a lingering trace of honor
influenced him, or any genuine disapproval of the character or
convictions of Ramirez, for Ruiz was in the widest sense a man to be
bought and sold, a creature influenced by every turn of advantage; but
in spite of all that had passed between him and Reyes, he doubted the
good faith of Ramirez. The good fortune that was to give him Chinita at
so slight a cost seemed to him incredible. Did the girl love him, and
had she owned as much? Or was she to be fooled into acquiescence in the
plans of Ramirez by the chimera of his parental power? No; he knew
Chinita too well to believe she would marry against her own desire, even
to gratify a parent who exerted over her the extraordinary ascendency
that she had instinctively acknowledged in Ramirez. Ruiz was, moreover,
impressed with a belief in the ultimate disaster of the Conservative
cause. For Chinita’s sake he would risk involvement in the ruin he
foresaw, hoping that by some spar he himself might float; but unless
assured of her good-will,—the thoughts of the young conspirator carried
him no further, unless vaguely to conjecture the extent of power which
he might thereafter exert over the fortunes of Doña Isabel, through his
connection with her mysterious _protégée_.

With ill-concealed impatience, and hopes and emotions which every hour
grew more dazzling and overpowering, Ruiz at length found himself in the
house of Doña Carmen, and in her presence and that of her young
companion. With inexpressible amazement, instead of her he sought he
found himself face to face with Chata, the supposed daughter of Don
Rafael.

The confusion and excitement of the arrival gave almost instantly an
opportunity for him to pour into the ear of the young girl the burning
questions which rushed to his lips. In the necessity in which she found
herself to attend instantly the wants of her mother, Doña Carmen left
the young soldier and her charge alone together. Breathlessly demanding
of Chata news of Chinita, Ruiz revealed to the astounded girl the
separation of her playmate from Doña Isabel, the mystery of her flight,
and the extraordinary purposes which the young girl had cherished in
relation to Ramirez. In every word too he betrayed his own love for her
he denounced, and the raging jealousy which possessed him.

Chata in her extreme agitation, forgetting the promises she had made,
revealed her own connection with Ramirez, in describing in a few brief
sentences the scenes which had taken place at Tres Hermanos, and
especially the means by which she had saved Don Rafael. She could not
comprehend the rage and disgust with which Ruiz flung himself from her
when she announced herself to be the daughter of Ramirez, but a moment
later it flashed upon her that she had heard herself named as the
destined bride of this man who so openly despised her. Had he too known
of the destiny awarded him? She turned from him with a burning blush,
and without a word they parted. She remembered afterward that she might
perhaps have sent news to the hacienda,—to her foster-father Don Rafael,
to Doña Feliz did she still live; but her one chance had gone, and her
semi-imprisonment began anew. Doña Carmen was not again betrayed into a
momentary forgetfulness of her charge.

Ruiz turned from the house with a thousand conflicting emotions. The
encounter with Chata had produced in his mind an absolute fury of
resentment, as he reflected that this was the girl whom Ramirez had
promised him as his wife,—in his boyhood jestingly; in his manhood as a
reward, an incentive. Heavens! what was this puny creature in comparison
with Chinita? And Chinita was perhaps at that very moment with
Ramirez,—perhaps even laughing with him over the weakness and
discomfiture of the youth they had combined to deceive! With blind and
insensate rage, Ruiz believed himself the victim of a conspiracy between
Ramirez and his own father to substitute this girl for the peerless
creature that he loved, and who doubtless was at that moment in the camp
of her triumphant lover. They had thought to entrap him into furthering
their designs, deeming it impossible that he should enter Guanapila and
discover the trick that was to be played upon him.

Ruiz did not for a moment conceive it possible that Ramirez had known
nothing of his love for Chinita, or that his father had himself been
ignorant of the identity of the girl whom Ramirez had claimed as his
daughter, or that Reyes had drawn a false conclusion from his own hasty
questions.

In this mood Ruiz was presently met by old acquaintances, before whom he
was forced to mask his excitement; and moreover they were in festive
humor, which prevented them from being observant or critical. The town,
but imperfectly garrisoned, had for some time held an anxious and
harassed populace, prognosticating nothing but invasion and the levy of
forced loans; but it chanced that on that day a guest had arrived, who
by the mere magic of his presence, unattractive and unimpressive as was
his bearing, inspired confidence and hope. Benito Juarez himself had
made one of those secret incursions for which he was famed, and had
reached Guanapila with the purpose of conferring with such officers of
his party as had ventured to meet him. There were but few, and Ruiz was
honored by an invitation to represent Gonzales. The deference paid him
as a delegate from so important a leader, in command of so considerable
a force, raised to its highest pitch the absolute fury of resentment
that convulsed the desperate lover; and at the banquet that followed the
conference, the wine and flattering notice of the Liberal President
completed the overthrow of the little caution that he had hitherto
maintained in his speech and demeanor.

The toasts drunk were loud and frequent, and the name of Ramirez was the
most deeply execrated. Many of the young men indulged in extravagant
boasts and declarations as to the deeds they would accomplish in the
near future, scorning the prowess of the man at whose very name they
were accustomed to tremble. Some one spoke with a laugh of a beautiful
girl who had been seen in his company but a few days before. It was not
until afterward that Ruiz reflected that the spy had probably caught a
glimpse of Chata on her way from Tres Hermanos. At the moment his mind
was full of Chinita, and rising impetuously, in a torrent of fiery words
he broke into denunciation and invective, telling the tale of Pedro’s
martyrdom as he had heard it, and vowing that as Ramirez had slain the
poor peasant, so he himself would accomplish the defeat and death of the
“mountain wolf.” “I promise you, Señores,” he concluded, “that when you
next hear of Fernando Ruiz you shall have cause to remember the vow I
have here made. Ramirez is doomed!”

The stoical man at the head of the table smiled faintly at the storm of
applause that followed this speech, and as Ruiz a few minutes later took
his departure Juarez muttered to his neighbor, “That young fellow will
bear watching. He has either a tremendous personal wrong to avenge, or
he is striving to mislead us. I know him to be the godson of this very
Ramirez, whom he thunders against. A Mexican may turn against, may even
murder, his own father; but his godfather,—he must be a renegade indeed
to attempt his destruction!” His neighbor assented.

When the words of Ruiz were reported to Ramirez,—as reported they were a
few days later,—he smiled as grimly as Benito Juarez himself had done.
“The cockerel crows loud,” he said. “He was always a blusterer. Well, we
shall see; a week at latest will decide all that. Bah! if the fellow but
had in him the blood of his father!—but with the name of his mother he
must have taken a braggart’s tongue. It will be well for him if he does
not weary my patience in the end. But for my promise to Reyes—”

He frowned darkly. Had Ruiz seen the face of his godfather then he might
have repented his boast. As it was, his own mad words served as a spur
urging him to the inevitable future. He returned to the camp of Gonzales
unmolested, and was received with intense relief, with thanks and
praises, yet wore thereafter a dark and vengeful face.

                                 XLII.

The arrival of Doña Isabel at the house of her daughter brought a change
into the life of Chata that might have been considered even more dreary
and oppressive than the semi-imprisonment to which she had thus far been
subjected, though she was spoken of as an honored guest. In fact this
change was most welcome to the young girl; for while it afforded her
even less freedom of movement, it gave a sufficient reason for her
seclusion, as also occupation both to body and mind.

What had been the nature of the communication that Ramirez had made to
Doña Carmen, Chata knew not, but it had evidently impressed that lady
with a deep sense of responsibility. In those days there were even in
the quietest times no regular mails into the country districts, and this
gave a ready pretext to Doña Carmen for resisting all attempts to
communicate with the household at Tres Hermanos. The highways, infested
as they were by roving bands of soldiers and banditti, were indeed
scarcely safe for the transmission of even peaceful intelligence; and
thus none reached Guanapila from the hacienda, and Chata, and in a
lesser degree Doña Carmen herself, endured a painful uncertainty as to
the condition of Don Rafael and of Doña Feliz and others whom Chata had
left stricken with the dreaded fever. Day by day she had awaited news;
day by day she had hoped for the appearance of Doña Isabel and
Chinita,—while Doña Carmen, after listening with astonishment and some
manifestations of displeasure to the account Chata gave of the departure
of her mother from Tres Hermanos under the escort of troops destined to
the relief of Gonzales, gave the opinion that the destination she would
seek would be El Toro rather than Guanapila.

“My sister the religious is at present there,” she said; and Chata with
glowing face, and lips that trembled at the memory, told her of the
chance glimpse she had once caught of the beautiful and saintly nun.

Doña Carmen’s eyes filled with tears, and she silently embraced the
girl; the little incident drew Chata nearer to her heart. “Ah, child,”
she would say, “I never have known, I never could conjecture, why our
beautiful Herlinda chose so sad a life,—it must be sad to be shut away
from this fair world, from sweet companionship, from love. Yes, Herlinda
might have chosen from among a score of the handsomest and noblest of
cavaliers. And then our mother,—how she loved her! one might see it
through all her sternness. I never knew the truth, yet I am sure a great
and terrible sorrow caused Herlinda to enter a convent. She had no
inherent fitness, no liking natural or acquired, for such a life.”

Doña Carmen was not accustomed to speak thus freely of family affairs.
She had much of the characteristic reticence of the Garcias. Chata met
many of the younger members from time to time. They were too well bred
to show any curiosity concerning her; but among the servants of the
household and of others, there was much gossip as to how and why she had
come, and what relationship she bore to the husband of Doña Carmen, who,
kind and amiable man that he was, seemed to take peculiar pleasure in
her companionship. But the arrival of Doña Isabel in an apparently dying
condition turned all thoughts into a new channel.

From the first, Chata had entreated to be allowed to take her part in
nursing the stricken lady, but had been gently refused. Thereafter, the
husband of Doña Carmen used often to see their young guest gliding
restlessly about the house vainly seeking some distraction for her
anxious thoughts. He did not know the secret pain that tormented her. He
would gladly have facilitated her return if he could to that Don Rafael
from whom in a mad freak the mountain chieftain had stolen her; yet
there were circumstances,—there were reasons for not offending one so
powerful. Who knew? Guanapila was of course under Liberal rule to-day,
but what would it be to-morrow? The cautious man shrugged his shoulders
and said something of this to Chata, who smiled and thought him good to
care, yet wondered with all his goodness and his years,—the years that
had not brought in their train any additional attractiveness to his
person,—that Doña Carmen loved him. Was it as she had heard, that his
riches had beguiled one already passing rich?

Since she had left El Toro, Chata had become a woman. Change of scene
had given impetus to the somewhat retarded development of her physique,
and mental anxiety had stimulated her mind and given to it an intuitive
appreciation of causes and events that is generally gained by innocent
and unsuspicious natures, such as hers, only after long experience.

Thus she comprehended fully, as she would not have done a few months
before, the gravity of the step Chinita had taken in separating herself
from Doña Isabel. Ruiz had not spared the woman he loved in the few
brief sentences he had passionately uttered: love was with him but a
devouring flame, ready to destroy its object either in the struggle of
attainment or in the fury of baffled desire. Chata blushed even in
secret when she remembered the aspersions he had cast upon the friend of
her childhood. She knew the innate purity of the girl’s mind, though it
had been developed amid surroundings which might well have tainted it.
She knew her pride: even when she was but the barefoot foster-child of
Pedro the gatekeeper, Chinita had held Pepé and his mates as far apart
from her as the dogs that followed them or the mules they tended. Dogs
and mules she liked well and made serve her needs, as also she did the
lads. Chata did not doubt that Pepé now as ever had proved himself the
slave of Chinita’s will. Perhaps it was to Tres Hermanos she had gone.
Although knowing as she did the fascination that Ramirez had always
exerted over the girl’s mind, she could not but fear that led not by
reckless passion but by a spirit of devotion at which Ruiz had sneered,
yet in which Chata herself recognized the peculiar strength and
determination of Chinita’s character, the impulsive creature might
actually have sought an entrance to the camp to urge the plan that she
conceived was to further the glory of the Church and the interest of him
whom she had made the hero of her imagination. That Ashley Ward was in
any way concerned in the disappearance of Chinita, either as a principal
or an accessory, Chata indignantly refused to believe. Her heart beat
suffocatingly as she thought of him. No, no! he was not a man to entice
a girl to her ruin.

And as days went by news reached Chata that strengthened this
conviction. The American was engaged in deeds of a far different
character. In his way he was beginning to fill the minds and occupy the
conversation of people as much as Ramirez had ever done. They gave him a
new name, as those at the hacienda had done; but Conservatives and
Liberals alike wondered at and exaggerated his exploits, until Ashley
had won a reputation for reckless bravado quite foreign to his true
character,—which was exhibiting itself in the most careful and nice
calculations of chances, the whole tending toward the fulfilment of the
task to which he had dedicated himself; namely, the downfall of the
unpunished and unrepentant murderer of John Ashley.

Chata recognized this, and was filled with emotions perhaps more
conflicting, more strange, than had ever before met in the breast of so
young a girl. They held her thoughts by day and night. Oh that she had
never left Ramirez! Oh that she could speak but for a few moments with
Ashley! But she was powerless; and meanwhile what was the fate of
Chinita? What that impending over the man she was in duty bound to
warn,—to love if it were possible?

But before these reflections had reached this point, an employment that
prevented them from becoming utterly overwhelming was afforded her.
Chata no longer wandered aimlessly about the house, but kept the strict
seclusion of Doña Isabel’s apartment, to which she had been hastily
summoned one night by Doña Carmen herself.

“My mother talks so strangely,” she had said in a low voice, pressing
her hands to her white and frightened face. “No, I cannot comprehend
what she says; but I cannot have the servants about her. They might
imagine unspeakable things. Oh, what tales and rumors they might set
afloat! No, no! I will not have them here, with their suspicions and
evil thoughts. But you,—you are innocent and frank; you will not torture
into strange meanings the mutterings of a diseased imagination.”

“No, no!” answered Chata, reassuringly. “It was the same with Doña
Feliz. Sometimes she talked so strangely, so sadly, one was forced to
weep, and then again to laugh; yes, in all my trouble I laughed. But I
will not now, Doña Carmen; only let me be useful. Doña Isabel did not
seem to like me when she was at the hacienda, so I kept as much as
possible out of her sight. She said my face was not such as Don Rafael’s
daughter should have; and after all,” she added sadly, “she was right.”

What passed in that sick chamber through those long days and nights Doña
Carmen and Chata never repeated, even to each other. Perhaps they could
not, all was so disconnected, so improbable, and through all her
delirium the patient held so great a restraint over her utterances.
Sometimes one escaped her that startled and commanded attention; but the
next invariably contradicted it, and it was impossible to form a
connected theory even had Chata tried. But that great sorrows, events to
cause constant and secret care and remorse, had taken place in the life
of Doña Isabel, and that they concerned Chinita closely, was abundantly
clear. What pathetic appeals, what wild ravings, in which the names of
those who had lived in the past,—of her husband, her mother, her
brother, and of Herlinda,—were constantly mingled with those of the
American and Chinita. And friends or servants followed each other in
endless yet confusing succession; yet of them all the name of Chinita
was the most frequent. The present grief combined all others; in Chinita
seemed centred the agonies and loves of her lifetime.

Chata listened with a sort of envy. Ah, if it had been given to her to
raise such a passion of feeling! She found herself from day to day
leaning with infinite tenderness over this woman, who had seemed so
cold, but whose heart was now revealed as a very volcano of repressed
and seething emotions. She was grateful and deeply touched that Doña
Isabel in her delirium clung to her fondly, calling her “Mother,” or
“Quina,” which Doña Carmen told her was the name of a cousin she had
dearly loved. Even after she had recognized her when the delirium was
past as the daughter of Don Rafael, she seemed pleased to have her
there; though she said querulously, “It is strange you are only a little
country girl. But Feliz has good blood in her; it has been transmitted
to you,—there is nothing of Rita, nothing of Rafael himself.”

After that she made no further comment; but her eyes often followed the
movements of Chata with a puzzled expression painful to see. One day
after she had become convalescent, Doña Carmen spoke of this. “Whom does
she remind you of?” she asked lightly.

“I cannot tell; I do not know,” Doña Isabel answered wearily. “Perhaps
it is of Chinita. Oh! I can think of nothing but Chinita. Are they still
looking for her, as I have prayed,—as I have commanded?”

“Mother,” said Doña Carmen, solemnly, “who is Chinita? Why should you
care so much?”

The face of Doña Isabel grew rigid. “Shall I tell you what you have
uttered in your delirium?” continued Doña Carmen, looking fixedly into
her mother’s eyes. “Shall I ask you if you spoke the truth, or if what I
have gathered—here a word, there a word—is but a dreadful fancy? Mother,
Mother! if it is the truth, no wonder that the fate of this girl is on
your soul! No wonder Herlinda—”

She paused affrighted. In her excitement she had said far more than she
had intended. What if her mother in her delicate condition should sink
beneath this cruel attack,—should faint, should die? Carmen threw
herself down beside the couch with a prayer for forgiveness.

Doña Isabel in the first surprise had clasped her hands over her heart.
Slowly the pale hue of life returned to her face. “Carmen,” she
whispered faintly, “speak! speak! After all these years, accusation—even
from my own child—is more bearable than silence. O my God, I meant
well!—it was for Herlinda’s sake. Yet what remorse, what agony I have
suffered!”

The two women sank into each other’s arms. There had ever been a barrier
of reserve between them,—in a moment it was swept away. Doña Isabel
poured out her heart. It was Carmen who withheld what might have been
revealed; a conviction seized her that there was much in this strange
family mystery yet undeclared, and of which Doña Isabel knew nothing;
and that her mother’s mind was in no condition to be perplexed by
further doubts and complications. She left the room and went to her
husband.

“Chulita my beautiful one,” he said anxiously, as she was about to leave
him an hour later, “thou wilt do nothing rash? Yet I will not forbid
thee. In truth, but that robberies and abductions are so common upon the
roads, I would go with thee myself.”

“Not for the world!” exclaimed Doña Carmen in genuine consternation.
“They would seize thee and carry thee into the mountains. But as for
me,—I promise thee no robber shall think me worth a second thought. But
hold thee ready,—the desire may come to her at a moment’s thought, and I
would not leave thee without warning; I would not have thee unprepared.”

                                 XLIII.

With the same unreasoning fury with which he had denounced Ramirez at
the banquet, Ruiz had returned to the camp of Gonzales; and through a
cleverly managed correspondence with Ramirez—in which however he dared
not mention the name of Chinita, lest he should awaken in the astute
mind of the General a suspicion that his godson conjectured the
deception which was to be played upon him—Ruiz gradually drew from the
chief data through which to propose such movements to Gonzales as
procured for him as a strategist the respect and admiration of that
commander, which well might have satisfied a laudable ambition.

Meanwhile Ramirez himself, though surrounded by no despicable force,
which was daily augmented by accessions from the mountains or from the
ranks of less popular leaders of either party, was for the first time in
his life oppressed by a vague melancholy,—which, with some impatience,
he ascribed to the forced separation from the child whose purity and
innocence had so irresistibly attracted him. There were times when he
thought with what horror such a record as his would be viewed by that
gentle and upright nature; and a positive dread came upon him of her
ever knowing the one incident that had been so vividly recalled to him
by the appearance of the avenger upon the grave of the man he had
murdered years before,—one crime among many he had almost forgotten. He
said to himself that an evil spell had been upon him ever since the day
when he had foolishly thrown away the charm the elf-like child had given
him. His emissaries had brought him word time and again of the
miscarriage of his best-laid plans. Who had betrayed them?

Ramirez knew too well who had frustrated them. The American who had
escaped his knife at the cemetery seemed ubiquitous since obtaining the
commission which authorized him to wage war against his cousin’s
murderer. Not content with defending El Toro with unexampled bravery, he
appeared at every point where an advantage was to be gained. “_Carrhi!_”
Ramirez said to himself, “I shall be forced to give that fellow a thrust
of my dagger in secret, since he appears to be impervious to ball and
proof against the chances of open warfare. He or I must fall. There’s
not room in all Mexico for him and me.”

Whether there was room or not, it seemed destined that they should
remain in it together, though not without constant collision. Gonzales
became to the mind of Ramirez far less formidable than this
yellow-haired foreigner, who with a mere handful of followers so
constantly harassed and baffled him. Like most men of his class, the
mountain chieftain was intensely superstitious, and one night in the
moonlight he saw, or fancied he saw, a female form glide before him into
the chaparral. He caught but a glimpse of the face, but it had reminded
him of Herlinda, for whom he had done the deed that, so late, seemed to
have brought upon him a threatened retribution. As he searched the
bushes for the woman, whom he could not discover, he shuddered as he
remembered the expression of her eyes,—as of a wronged creature who had
loved and now hated. He had seen such an expression in a woman’s eyes
before. More than ever after this strange occurrence the thought of
Ashley Ward tormented him; the young man’s face haunted him; and
curiously enough other faces also began to peer upon him,—faces of women
he had wronged, of men who with good cause bore him deadly hatred, or of
others whom, like the American, or the gatekeeper, he had murdered.

Ramirez grew strangely taciturn and nervous. Not even the letters of
Ruiz aroused him. In his heart he distrusted his godson, as he did all
men but Reyes, all women but Chata. Had she been near, he thought, he
would have talked to her and cast off his fancies; but in her absence
they grew upon him. One day he could have sworn he saw clearly not only
the face but the figure of Pedro Gomez; and upon another, that of the
woman he had loved long years before. Bah! they were fantasies. He
wondered whether he too would be seized with the fever, which was still
raging at Tres Hermanos, and of which they said its lady was dying at
her daughter’s house in Guanapila. Was this weakness of nerve the
presage of what was to come?

At last battle was joined with Gonzales as had been planned. The day
turned in favor of Ramirez; even the gallant assistance of Ward availed
little against the desperate courage of the mountain troops. The genius
and valor of their leader were manifested with a vigor that declared
they had been but shaken, not broken. Until the arrival of Ward it had
even appeared that the forces actually under the command of Ramirez
would have been sufficient to effect a victory; but Ward’s appearance
speedily turned the tide in favor of Gonzales, and with some impatience
Ramirez gave the signal that was to hasten the promised action of Ruiz.

But at the critical moment the expected ally failed him. With a
vindictive fury which was demoniacal in its exhibition, Ruiz threw
himself against his old commander. The carnage was terrible in that part
of the field; and when the fray was ended, the demoralization of
Ramirez’s troops was complete,—yet he himself had escaped.

That such should be the case seemed to Ashley Ward incredible, as later
he walked over the field seeking among the slain the man against whom he
had begun a private warfare, which to his own surprise had, with further
investigation of the principles involved, rapidly attained in his mind
the dignity of a struggle for liberty that even dwarfed the incentive of
personal revenge, although it was impossible that this should be wholly
forgotten or ignored.

Gonzales marched into El Toro amid the clanging of bells and shouts of
rejoicing; for though that was a convent town, the people of the lower
class were mad _Juaristas_, who did good service under Ward when troops
were scarce. The triumph had however not been gained without much loss
upon the Liberal side; and among the missing was the young officer who
in the eyes of Gonzales—and to the astonishment of Ward—had so ably
vindicated his character as a stanch adherent in the day of battle. Pepé
too, the right-hand man of Ward, was gone.

In very truth, at the last moment the most important and useful
calculation of Ruiz had failed. He saw Ramirez, by his orders,
surrounded by desperate men; it seemed inevitable that he must be
stricken down,—when a party led by Reyes broke through to his
assistance, and in the fury of the onslaught Ruiz himself was swept from
his horse and hurried away, and to his consternation found himself a
prisoner dragged onward in the irresistible impetus of flight.

They were miles distant from the scene of battle when the fugitives at
last paused; and here for the first time Ramirez knew of the special
prisoner that had been made. When his eyes fell upon the youth, a frown
which darkened as with a palpable cloud his already rigid and pitiless
face, overspread the countenance of Ramirez and made it absolutely
terrible. Even to fallen angels the crime of ingratitude may seem the
one damnable offence. In Ruiz, remembering the love and favor he had
shown him, Ramirez held it so to be. This insignificant boy had
compassed his ruin; his life seemed too poor a forfeit to condone the
offence. The baffled, desperate, outraged chieftain cursed the fate
which had cast the treacherous favorite into his power. But the terrible
blackness of his face still deepened, as he gazed.

A lasso had been drawn tightly around the waist of Ruiz. His face was
cut and bleeding; the gold lace and epaulettes had been torn from his
coat; his uncovered hair was filled with dust, and his face reeking with
sweat. He raised his bloodshot eyes appealingly. He knew the man before
him,—the man, worthless and unscrupulous though he was, who had been
kind to him, whom he had betrayed, and whose death he had attempted to
compass. Ruiz did not attempt to speak, but fell on his knees and raised
his bound hands. Ramirez gazed at him a moment in silence, then without
the quiver of a muscle in his impassive face uttered the sentence, “Let
him be shot at once!”

Shot at _once_,—from that terrible mandate there was no appeal. There
was not one there to utter a word in the traitor’s behalf, but only a
moan from the dust to which he had sunk. Reyes was not there; probably
the result would have been the same had he been. The soldiers raised the
young officer and stood him against a tree.

At the last moment that strange indifference to death, which among his
countrymen so often counterfeits courage, caused Ruiz to straighten his
figure and raise his head; and in the insolence of despair he said to
Ramirez, with a glance of malignant contempt, “Had you fallen into my
hands I would have shot you with my own pistol an hour ago.”

Perhaps the still proud youth hoped by this speech to escape the
ignominy of execution by a file of common soldiers. If so he was
mistaken. Ramirez gave the signal; the balls whizzed through the air and
found their way to their destined aim. Ruiz fell without a groan.
Ramirez himself, though still with an impassive face, to the
astonishment of all stooped and stretched the limbs and crossed the
hands of the young man upon his breast. There was a spot of blood upon
the face, and the chief wiped it away as tenderly as a mother might lave
the face of her dead infant; and yet but a few moments before he had
commanded this youth to a violent death, and according to the creed he
held, his soul to purgatory without benefit of clergy.

Forgetting to give the expected order for the execution of the other
prisoners, Ramirez turned away. In another moment he had placed himself
at the head of the party and continued the retreat. “At the next halt it
can be done as well,” remarked the lieutenant, philosophically. “There
are plenty of horses; bind the prisoners well and bring them along.”

And thus for that day at least Pepé Ortiz among others knew he had
escaped a fate of which the very idea—with the remembrance of Ruiz to
intensify its horror—made his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth and
his knees quiver with terror. Yet the day came when he, like the traitor
whose end he had witnessed, straightened himself against a tree, and
with apparent coolness awaited the mandate of Ramirez that was to
consign him to eternity; naught but a miracle it seemed could save him.
He only begged a cigarette of a soldier, remarking that they might be
scarce where he was going,—secretly hoping thus to hide the quiver of
the lips which belied the bravado of his words.

Shortly after this time, Chata to her surprise received by the hand of
an Indian fruitseller a brief note from Ramirez. At the first reading
its contents seemed hard and indifferent. He spoke with an almost savage
irony of those who were driving him back like a wolf to his mountain
lairs. “I know of fastnesses, if I care to seek them, where no foot but
mine has ever trod, and where this accursed American who is hunting me
down like fate could never hope to follow me,” he wrote. “But it shall
never be said that Ramirez fled from man or spirit, were it Satan
himself. After all, a man may not escape from him who is destined to
bring death to him. Ruiz was marked to die by me. I loved him, yet his
fate is accomplished.”

Chata shuddered. It seemed incredible that save by accident such a thing
could happen, so sacred is esteemed by Mexicans the tie between sponsor
and godchild; and the tone of the letter impressed her as that of a
desperate man who was ready for unheard-of deeds. Had Ramirez in truth
deliberately destroyed the man whom for years he had associated in his
every hope and plan, to whom he had promised the hand of his child? Deep
indeed must have been the villany that had merited such an end. The sigh
of relief which Chata involuntarily breathed, that she was free from the
possible accomplishment of the destiny that had been marked out for her,
was perhaps as sympathetic as any caused by the death of Fernando Ruiz.

A reperusal of the letter gave to Chata’s mind an impression of the
longing, the stinging regret, the remorse which the words had been
designed to conceal rather than display. The pride, the fierceness, the
unconquerable will of the writer pervaded them; yet the wail of a lost
spirit crying for the one good that it had known, and now believed
forfeited forever, seemed to echo through her soul. “He loves me,” she
thought remorsefully. “He believes himself doomed to die, and that he
will see me no more. Oh! if it were possible I would go to him. Oh, if I
dared tell Doña Isabel!—but no, she would keep me from him; she would
mock my pain with the cry that this was but the just recompense of the
evil he had brought upon her long ago. She believes her brother dead;
why torture her by telling her my miserable history?”

Chata showed the letter to Doña Carmen, and she it was who called the
girl’s attention to some chance mention of the name of the place where
Ramirez said he might be able to remain some days, even if closely
pressed, for the people there were secretly sworn to his support. Day
after day wild rumors flew through the city of the pursuit of Ramirez,
his capture, his death, only to be contradicted upon the next. They did
not seriously agitate Chata, for not once was the name of the place he
called his stronghold mentioned.

One night the anxious girl had a vivid dream. She dreamed she saw the
chieftain and Chinita lying dead,—the one on one side of a village
street, the other on the opposite. The people were rushing wildly about
screaming and gesticulating madly, while Doña Isabel, followed by women
clothed in black like herself, was in frenzy passing from one to the
other, uttering that low wail that seems the very key-note of woe.

Chata woke with a stifled scream. The wind was blowing shrilly through
the trees and seemed to bring to her a voice, which said, “Wake! oh
wake, Chata! I have dreamed of her.” The voice sounded close to her ear.
It came from Doña Isabel, who leaning over the dreamer’s bed was
repeating again and again the words, “I shall find her. I have dreamed
of her.”

Chata raised herself upon the pillows and caught the lady’s wasted hand.
“Yes, yes,” continued Doña Isabel, “I have dreamed of Chinita and of
another,—one I loved long years ago. I saw them together in Las Parras.
It is a revelation! Why have I not thought of it before? No other place
would be so fitting. I shall find her. I am going now, now! My carriage,
my horses, my men must be here; I will call them. Tell my daughter when
she wakes; she will understand.”

Doña Isabel turned to leave the room, her excitement supplementing her
returning strength; but Chata detained her. “I too will go,” she cried.
“Nothing shall prevent me. Doña Carmen will not stop us,—she knows; she
dare not forbid me. I will tell her now. She will know what is best for
us. The carriage is still here, but—”

Chata hastened from the room and wakened Doña Carmen. “Ah,” said the
daughter to herself, “the thought is come, and the hour.” She hastily
wrote a line to her husband, who was absent at a hacienda he owned near
the city; provided herself with some rolls of gold, and presently
entered her mother’s room dressed in a somewhat soiled cotton gown, and
with her reboso over her arm. Doña Isabel, who in the excitement of her
thoughts was walking hither and thither, taking up and putting down
articles of apparel, looked at her daughter blankly. Why, she thought,
had a servant come at that hour?

“See, I am ready,” cried Carmen, cheerfully. “The diligence is to leave
the city for the first time to-day. We shall pass through the country
quite safely. Who would stop such poor creatures as we appear to be?”

Doña Isabel looked at her daughter gratefully,—her mind had been running
helplessly upon carriages and mounted escorts and all the paraphernalia
of travel, which require so much time and thought to prepare. “True,
true!” she said, “that will be best, oh much the best!” In feverish
haste she prepared herself for the journey as Carmen had done, arraying
herself in a plain dark dress and reboso. But her daughter noticed that
she did not think of the expenses of the journey, and herself silently
assumed the direction of the little party.

Doña Carmen led the way from her own house so quietly that only the
doorkeeper to whom she gave a few directions, which he doubtless in his
amazement straightway forgot, was awakened. The three ladies were so
humbly dressed that they attracted but little notice at the diligence
house, and being hastily motioned to the poorest seats in the coach were
soon on their way. Covering their faces with their rebosos, they did not
so much as speak to one another.

Some ten leagues from the city the diligence was stopped by a half-dozen
armed men. The male passengers were ordered to lie down upon their
faces, and were despoiled of all their money and valuables. Chata to her
extreme disgust—which fortunately was disguised by her alarm—received an
amicable expression of approval from one of the bandits, which was
abruptly checked by the remark of the captain that this was no time for
fooling, as there was a rival band but a half-mile farther on. The elder
women escaped remark. Happily, the other band did not present itself,
and the three ladies told their beads in devout thankfulness.

That night the travellers remained at a miserable hut, which served as
an inn, feeling a certain protection in the presence of an aged priest,
who chanced to be awaiting there an opportunity to proceed upon a
long-interrupted journey; and upon the following morning he formed one
of the travelling party. Beyond bestowing upon them his blessing, he
said nothing to them,—although somewhat to her discomfort Doña Carmen
noticed that he often turned an inquiring gaze upon them. Early in the
afternoon the diligence stopped at a miserable village, the nearest
point at which, in the interrupted arrangements of travel, it approached
Las Parras; and having deposited Doña Isabel’s party and the priest,
diverged toward the north.

Doña Isabel looked around her helplessly, saying, “It is nearly eight
leagues to Las Parras. I have often been here,—I know the road well. We
shall never reach there!”

“You will see, Mother, you will see,” answered Doña Carmen, cheerfully;
and greatly to the astonishment of the priest and the women who stood
near, she drew forth a half-dozen ounces of gold, and held them up.
“See,” she said in her clear patrician voice, “you are good people here;
we are not afraid to trust you,”—her quick eye had shown her there was
not an able-bodied man in the almost ruinous place. “We are not so poor
as we look, and I will give you all this for three, four—” she glanced
at the priest—“horses, donkeys, or mules, be they ever so poor, upon
which we can go our way.”

The women laughed stupidly, and looked at one another and then at the
gold. Evidently if there was a beast of burden in the village it was
securely hidden, and though the money tempted them they were afraid.

“No, no,” said one at length. “Three weeks ago the Señores Liberales
drove off our last cow, and the week after the Señores Conservadores
slaughtered the turkeys, and—”

“But we want neither cows nor turkeys,” interrupted Carmen, impatiently.

“Quite true; but the Señorita would have horses,” answered the matron
imperturbably; “and yesterday the General Ramirez was here—”

She paused as though it were unnecessary to say more of the fate of
their horses; and Doña Isabel, starting up impetuously, hurriedly
questioned the assembled gossips. Upon the subject of the visit of
Ramirez the villagers were eloquent. He and his followers had reached
there spent with fatigue and long fasting. In a few moments the place
had been sacked of all its poor provision; there had not been enough to
give one poor ration to the half-dozen prisoners who were with them.
They would have been shot—yes, upon the very spot upon which their
graces were standing—but for the prayers of a young girl, who seemed to
be the lieutenant’s wife; at least she was in his care,—and Ramirez had
admitted it could be done as well at the next halt. She herself gave a
drink of water to the poor lads for the love of God, and also a tortilla
to one among them that she knew,—poor Pepé Ortiz; but he was too weak to
swallow it, and had given it to another less wretched than he.

Chata began to cry softly, while Doña Isabel demanded a description of
the young girl who had been of the party. This was vague enough; but
insufficient as it was it made the thought of further delay
impossible,—and the eloquence and gold of Doña Carmen, to which was
added the authority of the priest, presently induced the villagers to
produce four sorry beasts, upon which with some difficulty the party
were secured, for no saddles or panniers were to be had. It was almost
sunset when, following the old stage-road, the already wearied
travellers set out upon their long and possibly perilous ride.

The women of the village stood for a long time with arms akimbo, looking
after the departing travellers. They had divided the money among
themselves,—they felt rich and could afford to be pitiful. “The poor
Señora has perhaps lost a daughter,” said one—“doubtless the fair girl
who rode with the lieutenant. The Holy Mother protect her, for the man
was in two minds about taking her farther; but the Señor General swore
he would run his sabre through him if he cast her off to starve in such
a hole. To starve, eh! One who has never lived in my birthplace cannot
know how well the pigs fatten here when the tunas are ripe.”

“Pshaw! girls are fools, and not worth breaking one’s head for,” said a
second, whose only son kept her rich, when well-laden travellers were
plenty. “Where go they now? They are turning toward Las Parras. They
will miss the soldiers, or I am no prophet.”

“As a prophet one may give thee a thousand lashes, for thou art ever at
fault,” laughed a third. “But what matters it to us where they go? The
road is open to them as to another. They should not go far wrong with a
holy little priest to guide them.”

                                 XLIV.

Upon the very morning that Doña Isabel and her companion left Guanapila,
news which might perhaps have changed their movements had they heard of
it flew like wildfire over the city. The convents throughout Mexico had
been simultaneously opened under a decree of the Liberal government, and
thousands of women dedicated to a cloistered life were thus set free to
choose anew their destiny.

Women who for half a century, perhaps, had lived apart from life and
love were returned to die amid the turmoils of a home where love for
them had ceased, or to pass over seas to seclusion in strange lands.
Others, in whom voices as of demons were but just then ceasing to tempt
the memory with whispers of the world and its alluring joys, saw those
joys actually within their reach, and with dismay sought to turn their
eyes away, and prayed for strength to brave the perils of the deep, and
bear the homesickness that in a strange country would torment the soul
of the cloistered nun as surely as if she had been free to gaze upon the
valleys and mountains of the native land she was about to leave forever.
Younger women, those to whom the early years of seclusion had brought
but disenchantment, were cruelly roused from the stupor of habit which
was succeeding pain and presaging content, and with secret regret now
clung to the vows they fain would have cast aside forever, or in a few—a
very few—cases became that shunned and despised creature, a recreant
nun. That night was the signal for horror and tears throughout the land.
A wail arose from thousands of families, about to catch a glimpse of
their consecrated dear ones, and then to know them banished forever.
Such uprooting of ties, such griefs, such domestic woes, are inevitable
in all great national or social revolutions.

A certain secrecy had been observed in the preparations for and
execution of this stroke of policy, which had indeed been threatened and
openly urged as a political necessity, but which in spite of the exile
of the archbishops and the suppression of monasteries had been
thought—even by those who acknowledged its probable benefits to the
nation—too daring a measure ever to be carried into effect. It had been
thought a dream of the arch-iconoclast Juarez. But he was a man whose
dreams were apt to come true; and so it happened upon this summer night,
striking admiration and consternation to the hearts of Liberals and
Conservatives alike, for there was scarce a family of either party
throughout Mexico that was not represented in the vast religious houses
which abounded in every town. Into these, overcoming their superstitious
scruples, the populace for the first time now penetrated, and learned
something of the surroundings and consequent life of those whom for
centuries they had supported as saints, dedicated to prayer and fasting
for the sins of the people. To their disenchantment and surprise, the