THE JAGUAR.
The Jaguar, when he left the Venta del Potrero, was suffering from
extreme agitation, the maiden's words buzzed in his ears, with a mocking
and ironical accent; the last look she had given him pursued him like a
remorse. The young man was angry with himself for having so hastily
broken off the interview with Doña Carmela, and dissatisfied with the
way in which he had responded to her entreaties; in short, he was in the
best possible temper to commit one of those acts of cruelty into which
the violence of his character only too often led him, which had
inflicted a disgraceful stigma on his reputation, and which he always
bitterly regretted having committed, when it was too late.
He rode at full speed across the prairie, lacerating the sides of his
horse, which reared in pain, uttering stifled maledictions, and casting
around the ferocious glances of a wild beast in search of prey.
For a moment he entertained the idea of returning to the venta, throwing
himself at the maiden's feet, and repairing the fault which his growing
jealousy had forced him to commit, by abjuring all his hopes, and
placing himself at Doña Carmela's service, to do whatever she might
please to order.
But, like most good resolutions, this one lasted no longer than a
lightning flash. The Jaguar reflected, and with reflection doubt and
jealousy returned. The natural consequences of which was fresh fury,
wilder and more insane than the first.
The young man galloped on thus for a long time, apparently following no
settled direction; still at long intervals he stopped, rose in his
stirrups, explored the plain with an eagle-glance, and then started
again at full speed.
At about three in the afternoon he passed the conducta de Plata, but as
he perceived it a long way off, it was easy for him to avoid it by
swerving slightly to the right, and entering a thick wood of pine trees,
which rendered him invisible long enough for him not to fear discovery
from the scouts sent on ahead.
About an hour before sunset, the young man, who had perhaps stopped a
hundred times to explore the neighbourhood, uttered a suppressed cry of
joy; he had at length come up to the persons he was so anxious to join.
Not five hundred yards from the spot where the Jaguar had halted, a band
of thirty to five and thirty horsemen was following the track
complimented with the name of road, that led across the prairie.
This band, entirely composed of white men, as could be easily seen from
their costume, appeared to assume something of a military air, and all
were fully equipped with arms of every description.
At the beginning of this story we mentioned some horsemen just
disappearing on the horizon; these were the men the Jaguar had just
perceived.
The young man placed his open hands to his mouth in the shape of a
speaking trumpet, and twice gave a sharp, shrill, and prolonged cry.
Although the troop was some distance off at the moment, still at this
signal the riders stopped as if the feet of their horses had suddenly
become embedded in the ground.
The Jaguar then bent over his saddle, leaped his horse over the bushes,
and in a few minutes joined the men who had stopped for him.
The Jaguar was hailed with shouts of joy, and all pressed round him with
marks of the deepest interest.
"Thanks, my friends," he said, "thanks for the proofs of sympathy you
give me; but I must ask you to give me a moment's attention, for time
presses."
Silence was re-established, as if by enchantment, but the flashing
glances fixed on the young man said clearly that sympathy, though dumb,
was not the less vivid.
"You were not mistaken, Master John," the Jaguar said, addressing one
of the persons nearest to him; "the conducta is just behind us; we are
not more than three or four hours' march ahead of it; as you warned me,
it is escorted, and in proof that great importance is attached to its
safety, the escort is commanded by Captain Melendez."
His audience gave a start of disappointment at these news.
"Patience," the Jaguar went on, with a sarcastic smile; "when force is
not sufficient, stratagem remains; Captain Melendez is brave and
experienced, I grant you, but are we not also brave men? Is not the
cause we defend grand enough to excite us to carry out our enterprise at
all hazards?"
"Yes, yes, hurrah, hurrah!" all the hearers shouted, as they brandished
their weapons enthusiastically.
"Master John, you have already entered into relations with the Captain;
he knows you, so you will remain here with another of our friends. Allow
yourselves to be arrested. I entrust to you the duty of removing the
suspicions that may exist in the Captain's mind."
"I will do it, you may be certain."
"Very good, but play close with him; for you have a strong opponent."
"Do you think so?"
"Yes. Do you know who accompanies him?"
"On my word, no."
"El Padre Antonio."
"What's that you say? by Jove, you did right to warn me."
"I thought so."
"Oh, oh! Does that accursed monk wish to poach on our manor?"
"I fear it. This man, as you know, is affiliated with all the scamps, no
matter of what colour, who prowl about the desert: he is even reported
to be one of their Chiefs; the idea of seizing the conducta may easily
have occurred to him."
"By Heaven, I will watch him; trust to me, I know him too thoroughly and
too long for him to care to oppose me; if he dared to attempt it, I
could reduce him to impotence."
"That is all right. When you have obtained all the information we
require to act, lose not a moment in informing us, for we shall count
the minutes while waiting for you."
"That is settled. I suppose we meet at the Barranca del Gigante."
"Yes."
"One word more."
"Make haste."
"What about Blue-fox?"
"Hang it! I forgot all about him."
"Shall I wait for him?"
"Certainly."
"Shall I treat with him? You know but little reliance is to be placed in
the word of an Apache."
"That is true," the young man answered, thoughtfully; "still, our
position is at this moment most difficult. We are left to our own
resources; our friends hesitate, and dare not yet decide in our favour;
while, on the other hand, our enemies are raising their heads, regaining
courage, and preparing to attack us vigorously. Although my heart heaves
against such an alliance, it is still evident to me, that if the Apaches
consent frankly to help us, their assistance will be very useful to
us."
"You are right. In our present situation, outlawed by society, and
tracked like wild beasts, it would, perhaps, be imprudent to reject the
alliance of the Redskins."
"Well, my friend, I give you full liberty, and events must guide you. I
trust entirely to your intelligence and devotion."
"I shall not deceive your expectations."
"Let us part now; and luck be with you."
"Goodbye, till we meet again."
"Goodbye, till to-morrow."
The Jaguar gave a parting nod to his friend or accomplice, whichever the
reader pleases to call him, placed himself at the head of the band, and
started at a gallop.
This John was no other than John Davis, the slave-dealer, whom the
reader probably remembers to have come across in the earlier chapters of
this story. How it is we find him again in Texas, forming part of a band
of outlaws, and become the pursued instead of the pursuer, would be too
long to explain at this moment. Let us purpose eventually to give the
reader full satisfaction on the point.
John and his comrades let themselves be apprehended by Captain
Melendez's scouts, without offering the slightest opposition. We have
already described how they behaved in the Mexican camp; so we will
follow the Jaguar at present.
The young man seemed to be, and really was, the chief of the horsemen at
whose head he rode.
These individuals all belonged to the Anglo-Saxon race, and to a man
were North Americans.
What trade were they carrying on? Surely a very simple one.
For the moment they were insurgents; most of them came to Texas at the
period when the Mexican government authorized American immigration. They
had settled in the country, colonized it, and cleared it; in a word,
they ended by regarding it as a new country.
When the Mexican government inaugurated that system of vexations, which
it never gave up again, these worthy fellows laid down the pick and the
spade to take up the Kentucky rifle, mounted their horses, and broke out
in overt insurrection against an oppressor who wished to ruin and
dispossess them.
Several bands of insurgents were thus hastily formed on various points
of the Texan territory, fighting bravely against the Mexicans wherever
they met with them. Unfortunately for them, however, these bands were
isolated; no tie existed among them to form a compact and dangerous
whole; they obeyed chiefs, independent one of the other, who all wished
to command, without bowing their own will to a supreme and single will,
which would have been the only way of obtaining tangible results, and
conquering that independence, which, owing to this hapless dissension,
was still regarded as a Utopia by the most enlightened men in the
country.
The horsemen we have brought on the stage were placed under the orders
of the Jaguar, whose reputation for courage, skill, and prudence was too
firmly established in the country for his name not to inspire terror in
the enemies whom chance might bring him across.
The sequel will prove that, in choosing their chiefs, the colonists had
made no mistake about him.
The Jaguar was just the chief these men required. He was young,
handsome, and gifted with that fascination which improvises kingdoms; he
spoke little, but each of his words left a reminiscence.
He understood what his comrades expected of him, and had achieved
prodigies; for, as ever happens with a man born for great things, who
rises proportionately and ever remains on a level with events, his
position, by extending, had, as it were, enlarged his intellect; his
glance had become infallible, his will of iron; he identified himself so
thoroughly with his new position, that he no longer allowed himself to
be mastered by any human feeling. His face seemed of marble, both in joy
and sorrow. The enthusiasm of his comrades could produce neither flame
nor smile on his countenance.
The Jaguar was not an ordinary ambitious man; he was grieved by the
disagreement among the insurgents; he most heartily desired a fusion,
which had become indispensable, and laboured with all his might to
effect it; in a word, the young man had faith; he believed; for, in
spite of the innumerable faults committed since the beginning of the
insurrection by the Texans, he found such vitality in the work of
liberty hitherto so badly managed, that he learned at length that in
every human question there is something more powerful than force, than
courage, even than genius, and that this something is the idea whose
time has come, whose hour has struck by the clock of Deity. Hence he
forgot all his annoyances in hoping for a certain future.
In order to neutralize, as far as possible, the isolation in which his
band was left, the Jaguar had inaugurated certain tactics which had
hitherto proved successful. What he wanted was to gain time, and
perpetuate the war, even though waging an unequal contest. For this
purpose he was obliged to envelop his weakness in mystery, show himself
everywhere, stop nowhere, enclose the foe in a network of invisible
adversaries, force him to stand constantly on guard, with his eyes
vainly fixed on all points of the horizon, and incessantly harassed,
though never really and seriously attacked by respectable forces. Such
was the plan the Jaguar inaugurated against the Mexicans, whom he
enervated thus by this fever of expectation and the unknown, the most
terrible of all maladies for the strong.
Hence the Jaguar and the fifty or sixty horsemen he commanded were more
feared by the Mexican government than all the other insurgents put
together.
An extraordinary prestige attached to the terrible chief of these
unsiegeable men; a superstitious fear preceded them, and their mere
approach produced disorder among the troops sent to fight them.
The Jaguar cleverly profited by his advantages to attempt the most
hazardous enterprises and the most daring strokes. The one he meditated
at this moment was one of the boldest he had hitherto conceived, for it
was nothing less than to carry off the conducta de plata and make a
prisoner of Captain Melendez, an officer whom he justly considered one
of his most dangerous adversaries, and with whom he, for that very
reason, longed to measure himself, for he foresaw the light such a
victory would shed over the insurrection, and the partisans it would
immediately attract to him.
After leaving John Davis behind him, the Jaguar rapidly advanced toward
a thick forest, whose dark outline stood out on the horizon, and in
which he prepared to bivouac for the night, as he could not reach the
Barranca del Gigante till late the following day. Moreover, he wished
to remain near the two men he had detached as scouts, in order the
sooner to learn the result of their operations.
A little after sunset, the insurgents reached the forest, and
instantaneously disappeared under covert.
On reaching the top of a small hill which commanded the landscape, the
Jaguar halted, and ordered his men to dismount and prepare to camp.
A bivouac is soon organized in the desert.
A sufficient space is cleared with axes, fires are lighted at regular
distances to keep off wild beasts; the horses are picketed, and sentries
placed to watch over the common safety, and then everybody lies down
before the fire, rolls himself in his blanket, and that is all. These
rough men, accustomed to brave the fury of the seasons, sleep as
profoundly under the canopy of the sky, as the denizens of towns in
their sumptuous mansions.
The young man, when everybody had lain down to rest, went the rounds to
assure himself that all was in order, and then returned to the fire,
when he fell into earnest thought.
The whole night passed and he did not make the slightest movement; but
he did not sleep, his eyes were open and fixed on the slowly expiring
embers.
What were the thoughts that contracted his forehead and made his
eyebrows meet?
It would be impossible to say.
Perhaps he was travelling in the country of fancy, dreaming wide awake
one of those glorious dreams we have at the age of twenty, which are so
intoxicating and so deceitful!
Suddenly he started and sprung up as if worked by a spring.
At this moment the sun appeared in the horizon, and began slowly
dispersing the gloom.
The young man bent forward and listened.
The sharp snap of a gun being cocked was heard a short distance off, and
a sentry concealed in the shrubs shouted in a harsh, sharp voice:--
"Who goes there?"
"A friend," was the reply from the bushes. The Jaguar started.
"Tranquil here!" he muttered to himself; "For what reason can he seek
me?"
And he rushed in the direction where he expected to find the
Panther-killer.