The sun set and twilight ensued, but for a brief space. The moon was near its full, and arose nearly as soon as its more brilliant brother had disappeared, and in that clear atmosphere its light rendered objects with nearly the distinctness of noon-day.
In perhaps an hour after sunset the party halted for supper, there fortunately being enough stowed behind the coach in a hamper for a tolerable meal. Then for the first time Marcos Sayosa heard the cause of the journey and residence of the party he had been so fortunate in rescuing.
They had been on a visit to some friends at the city of Mexico for a couple of weeks, and had got thus far upon their return home, intending to pause for the night at Guanajuato, when they were attacked by the Melladios, who had ambushed themselves in a shallow ditch, being part of the band repulsed by Marcos on the edge of the town, as already detailed.
Marcos seemed wonderfully attracted by Dona Luisa, while she, in return, appeared to feel the same influence, although much less plainly shown. Still, it did not escape the notice of her mother and Felipe. The latter especially seemed ill at ease, and hovered close to his sister, acting more like a lover than the relation he held toward her. But he heard nothing at which he could take offense; every word spoken by Marcos was respectful, almost reverential; but his tones evinced his sincerity, telling that if not in love, he was not very far from that most delightful state.
After an hour’s rest the company again started, intending to travel the greater part of the night. The wind had died away, and as the night was warm and pleasant, the carriage windows were let down, and a desultory conversation was kept up by the four persons. During it Sayosa received a cordial invitation to pay the Canelos’ hacienda a visit, so warmly pressed that when Luisa added her soft voice, he accepted it, though not without some inward misgivings as to the wiseness of throwing himself in the way of temptation, when presented in such a bewitching form as Luisa Canelo. He knew too well that it would be presumptuous in him to think of her for his bride, and would not that be the result?
Toward morning they again halted, and at daybreak Sayosa and his followers took their leave, as now there could be no further danger, and that day would see them safe at the hacienda. The men were not allowed to depart without a liberal reward from Felipe, and probably not one regretted the duty that had been forced upon them.
The party separated, Marcos riding off by himself on a course that would carry him considerably to the left of Guanajuato. He rode slowly along, little heeding what course he took, with his mind in utter confusion. The sentences that he muttered from time to time told the subjects of his thoughts. They were of Luisa Canelo and love. He pshawed and pished at the idea of being in love with her, but this very fact showed that there was some foundation for the surmise.
“Bah! what a fool I am getting to be,” he exclaimed, impatiently, “thinking of her in this way! As if she would look at me in my station, except as one who had done her a slight service! I half expected they would offer me gold, to pay me for my trouble. But, they did not; perhaps they understood me too well. And then—am I not pledged? Yes, and to one who can compare favorably with even the proud Senorita Canelo—my Carlita! I love her; surely I do, and yet—bah, I am a fool, and worse!” he muttered, as tightening the reins, he applied his spurs, and galloped swiftly over the prairie.
With but a short pause at noon to allow his horse necessary rest, he rode rapidly until late in the afternoon, passing Guanajuato, and finally reached a small stream that ran through a group of trees. Dismounting, he led the animal along a narrow path, with the relieved air of a man who was at his journey’s end. Suddenly he paused.
A shrill, piercing shriek rung out upon the still air, closely followed by another; then came the hoarse tones of a man.
Relinquishing the bridle and drawing a pistol, Marcos sprung forward toward the point from whence the alarm sounded. He knew full well the owner of the first voice, and a cold, chilling hand seemed grasping his heart, as he thought of her danger—she to whom he had given his first love and pledged his hand—Carlita.
Running through the undergrowth, regardless of the thorns that lacerated his flesh, he plunged into a little glade. Two forms met his gaze—a man and a woman, or rather a young girl. She was struggling wildly in his grasp, with her face toward the point where approached the young miner, and as she caught sight of him, cried out imploringly:
“Save me, Marcos; save me for the love of our Virgin!”
Sayosa dared not fire, for fear of hitting the maiden, and leaped forward with an angry howl of rage. But the maiden’s call had alarmed the man, and as he saw Marcos, he dropped the girl, and with one leap was hidden in the undergrowth, closed followed by a bullet from the young miner’s pistol.
For a moment Marcos hesitated, but then the sight of the pale, motionless Carlita, who lay where she had fallen, decided him, and dropping to his knees beside her, he pressed his hand to her heart. With a fervent shout of joy he felt it flutter, and knew that she had only fainted. Quickly filling his sombrero with the clear, sparkling water, he plentifully sprinkled her face with it, and in a few moments she opened her eyes, to his great joy.
“Where is he—that fearful man? Oh, Marcos, is it you? I am so glad!” murmured Carlita, as she closed her eyes again, and nestled still to his breast.
“Do not think of it, mi alma,” returned Marcos, pressing a kiss upon her damp brow. “He is gone and will trouble you no more. But that I could not leave you then, he would be food for the coyotes and zopilates before now.”
“Ah, no, Marcos, he is a terrible man. Promise me you will not seek him; he would kill you!” shuddered Carlita.
“Do you know him, darling? Tell me how it happened.”
“But you will not fight him? Remember, you are all I have to love now upon earth, excepting poor father.”
“Well, never mind now,” said Marcos, “but tell me how he came to molest you.”
“It is not the first time he has met me, but never before did he venture to touch me, although he said horrible, dreadful things,” murmured the girl, hiding her face and sobbing.
“But his name?” repeated Sayosa, a little sternly.
“I do not know it, but I saw him first at the fandango last month. You remember? He came up and spoke to you.”
“Ha, I suspected it!” exclaimed the young miner. “Was there no mark by which you would know him; on his face, I mean?”
“Yes; a small, dark-blue spot just over his eye—the left, I think.”
“Go on; tell me all. It is as I thought; and I spared his life, the cursed hound!” gritted Sayosa.
“He met me first about two weeks after that, and spoke in a way that frightened me; as if he—loved me—”
“And you never told me?” demanded the miner, a little sternly.
“Pardon me, Marcos; I was afraid. You know how brave you are, and I thought if you knew, you might get hurt,” pleaded Carlita. Then, as he did not speak, she continued more rapidly: “Once afterward I saw him, and he spoke the same, but I left him without an answer. Then to-day I was walking along the arroyo, wondering why you did not come, when he suddenly stepped before me, and as I turned to run, he frightened me so, he caught hold of my arm and held me fast. Then he said something worse than all, that I thought would kill me, and as I screamed he caught me in his arms and tried to drag me away, when you came.”
“I understand; but, Carlita, darling, you did very wrong in not telling me when he first insulted you, and then this would not have happened. He is a dissolute, unprincipled villain, and I shudder at what might have been your fate if I had not arrived as I did,” chided Sayosa. “But come, let us go to the house. Is tio Tomas at home?”
“No. He went away just before noon, but he should be back by this time,” and then they crossed the arroyo on a foot-bridge, of a tree that had been felled over to span the little stream, and approached the house, or rather jacale, for it was no better.
Its walls were composed of the split trunks of the arborescent yucca, set stockade fashion in the ground, while its roof was a thatch furnished by the long, bayonet-shaped leaves of the same gigantic lily. The interstices between the uprights, instead of being “chinked” with clay, as is common among the lower class of peasants, was wattled with a species of heavy grass or reed.
The form of a man, old and enfeebled from age and sickness, sat upon a rude stool just within the doorway, smoking a pipe, slowly ejecting the fragrant vapor through his thin nostrils, his head leaning against the side of the door, with closed eyes and a faint smile of intense enjoyment playing around his mouth that told plainly he was a lover of the narcotic weed.
If looks were a criterion, he was already past the age allotted to man. His face was one mass of wrinkles; the hair was white as snow, and made but a thin, narrow fringe around his crown, like the shaven poll of a monk. He had been very tall, but now his form was like a bent bow, the chin resting upon his chest, giving him the appearance of being humpbacked. Such was Tomas Ventura, better known as tio, or uncle Tomas.
The wolf-like dog that lay at his feet leaped up and ran to welcome the young couple, arousing the old man, who, when he saw what was the cause, signified his pleasure by rubbing his bony hands together and calling out in a shrill, cracked voice:
“Ah, Marcos, my son, you are as welcome as the first drop of rain. But where have you been so long? and see, the boy is hurt! Look at the blood. Is it bad, Marcos, is it bad?”
“A few scratches, tio Tomas, nothing more,” was the hasty reply, for he noted the sudden start of alarm given by Carlita, who had been so excited by the adventure she had met with, that she did not notice he had been wounded before.
“But how was it, child, how did it happen? In a duel?” persisted Ventura, with the curiosity of old age.
“No,” hesitated Marcos, for it was partially from that cause, as the reader knows, but he did not wish Carlita to learn of that just at present; “it was with the Melladios. They attacked us of the Scarlet Shoulders night before last.”
“Ah, the accursed dogs! But you beat them; say that you beat the cowardly ladrones!” eagerly cried the old man.
“Ay, that we did!” laughed Sayosa, “and so thoroughly that they will rest satisfied for a year to come. But, dear Carlita, you must change your clothes. It is getting chilly,” he added, as they entered the house.
“Santissima Virgin, she is all wet! Did you fall into the arroyo, nina?” anxiously queried Ventura, for the first time noting the condition of his daughter.
“No, not that, uncle, but worse,” returned Marcos. “Come out of doors and I will tell you all.”
In a few words he narrated the insult given by Estevan Despierto, the duel, and then his dastardly conduct to Carlita, with the assault from which she had just been delivered; for, from the peculiarity mentioned by Carlita, he had recognized Despierto as the villain. The blue spot, left by a pistol-shot that had been discharged so close to his face that the burnt powder had penetrated the skin, was an indelible brand.
“Madre de Soledad! and I so near!” murmured the father. “So near, and not know of my child’s danger! But he did not—you saved her from all harm?”
“Excepting a bad affright.”
“Thank God it was you. But listen. My Carlita is beautiful and good—even a father may say that—and she loves you, better far than life itself. And you—can you, do you love her?” anxiously asked Ventura.
“Yes; I do, I will love her, best of all!” exclaimed Marcos, but there was a remonstrance at his heart; the bright, beautiful face of Luisa Canelo was there, and seemed to reproach him for the words.
“I hoped so—I knew so; and I am glad. I am an old man, Marcos, and, as you know, very poor. But you saved my daughter; she who looks at me with her mother’s eyes, and I shall not forget it. Listen. I can not live much longer; I feel that I must soon die, although it is sorrow and care—remorse, not age, that has made me what I am. I am not much over fifty years of age, but I look nearer a hundred. You wonder, but it is true. And when I die—after I am dead, you will be rich. Yes, rich as a prince—a prince, Marcos!”
“Never mind that now, uncle; we will talk it over some other time. Let us return to the jacale,” soothingly replied Sayosa, as he took the old man’s arm, thinking that the tale of Carlita’s peril had shocked his brain; for the neighbors all called him “crazy Ventura,” and the youth partially shared their belief that the old man was of unsound mind.
“No, no, Marcos, my son, you are wrong,” said Ventura. “I am not wandering; my brain is not crazed. Although the blessed Virgin knows that I have endured enough to make me so. I am speaking the truth when I say that if you marry Carlita, after I am gone, you will be wealthy; with gold that you could not count in a lifetime, and lands where you may gallop all day long, in a straight line, without touching an inch of ground that does not call you master.”
“Well, let us go to the house, for I am fearfully hungry. I have not eaten a mouthful of food since last night,” lightly returned Sayosa.
“Por Dios, is it so? Then come, hasten; my poor boy, you must be starving,” cried Ventura, and the two men were soon eating a hearty meal, prepared by the little brown hands of Carlita.
She was a tiny, fairy-like creature, but with an admirably modeled form, of exquisite grace and beauty. She had the large, lustrous black eyes that are seen only to perfection in Mexico, but more especially in the valley of Jalapa. Her hair was worn rather short, curling in masses around her small head and graceful neck, glossy as the plumage of a raven, and with the same blue-black sheen. Her arms, hand, tiny-slippered foot and trim ankle were matchless even among the ones to whom such charms are hereditary. And although so young in years, but little past her buen quince (beautiful fifteen), she was a fully-developed woman. Those years passed under the sun of a Southern sky are what two or three and twenty are in our temperate climate.
Her father had appeared at their present situation when she was yet an infant, and although, from the great contrast between the two, it was hinted they were not of such close relationship, yet he was her father.
With them had come a boy, Marcos Sayosa, who had been taught to call the one uncle and the other cousin. But when he grew older and began to ask about his parents, Tomas Ventura told him that he was not a nephew, or, indeed, any relation whatever. That a man and woman had come to his house, asking shelter, where he had been born. The father was badly wounded in the conflict with banditti in which they had lost their all, excepting the clothes they wore, and had managed to escape and wander to his hut. The man died of his wounds, and after Marcos’ birth his mother sunk rapidly from grief for her husband, and on the third day she also died. They were buried side by side, and Ventura determined to adopt the child, calling it after its father’s name, and had done so, rearing him as though he was of his own flesh and blood, although it was a constant struggle with him to obtain food for the mouths of those dependent upon him.
This was the story that Marcos had heard. Who or what his parents were he could not learn. They had been robbed of every thing—not even a scrap of paper was to be found—and in their woful condition Ventura had not ventured to question them; and no clue, excepting the one name, was dropped from their lips.
With this Sayosa was forced to be content, and as his years increased, he learned to love the sweet Carlita, and she him. They were pledged to each other, and until the hour in which he met Luisa Canelo, he had thoughts for none other. But now he was bewildered, and knew not what to do. Although he declared to himself that he loved Carlita, and her only, his thoughts would wander to Luisa, and her image was far oftener present to his mind than he would have cared to admit.