"I know a man who will yield in nothing--neither at following a trail,
nor taming a wild horse--to Tiburcio Arellanos; and yet this secret has
been almost worthless in his keeping, since he has just sold it for the
tenth part of its value!"
This last argument of Cuchillo's was sufficiently strong to convince Don
Estevan that the Golden Valley was so guarded by these fierce Indians
that nothing but a strong party could reach it--in short, that he
himself was the only man who could set this force afoot. For a while he
remained in his silent reverie. The revelations of Cuchillo in regard
to the adopted son of Marcos Arellanos had opened his mind to a new set
of ideas which absorbed all others. For certain motives, which we
cannot here explain, he was seeking to divine whether this Tiburcio
Arellanos was not the young Fabian de Mediana!
Cuchillo on his part was reflecting on certain antecedents relative to
the gambusino Arellanos and his adopted son; but for powerful reasons he
did not mention his reflections to Don Estevan. There are reasons,
however, why the reader should now be informed of their nature.
The outlaw, as we have said, frequently changed his name. It was by one
of these aliases used up so quickly, that he had been passing, when at
the Presidio Tubac he made the acquaintance of the unfortunate
Arellanos. When the latter was about starting out on his second and
fatal journey--before parting with his wife and the young man whom he
loved as well as if he had been his own son--he confided to his wife the
object of his new expedition; and also the full particulars of the route
he intended to take. Cuchillo was nevertheless ignorant of this
revelation. But the knowledge which the outlaw carefully concealed, was
that he himself after having reached the Golden Valley guided by
Arellanos, murdered his companion, in hope of having all the treasure to
himself. It was true enough that the Indians appeared afterwards, and
it was with difficulty that the assassin could save his own scalp. We
shall now leave him to tell his own story as to how he made the
acquaintance of young Arellanos, and it will be seen that this story is
a mere deception practised upon Don Estevan.
"Nevertheless," resumed Cuchillo in breaking the silence, "I was
determined to free my mind from all doubt upon the subject. On my
return to Arispe I repaired to the dwelling of the widow of Arellanos to
inform her of the death of poor Marcos. But with the exception of the
great grief which the news caused her, I observed nothing particular--
nothing that could give me the least suspicion that I am not the sole
possessor of the secret of the Golden Valley."
"One easily believes what he wishes to believe," remarked Arechiza.
"Hear me, Senor Don Estevan! There are two things on which I pride
myself. One is, that I have a conscience easily alarmed; the other,
that I am gifted with a perspicuity not easily deluded."
The Spaniard made no further objections. He was satisfied, not with the
outlaw's conscience, but his perspicuity.
With regard to Tiburcio Arellanos, we need hardly state what the reader
has no doubt already divined--that this young man was in reality no
other than Fabian, the last descendant of the Counts of Mediana.
Cuchillo has already related how the English brig brought him to
Guaymas. Left without a guide to enable him to discover his family--
disinherited of his rich patrimonial estates--an orphan knowing nothing
of his parents, here he was in a strange land, the possessor of nothing
more than a horse and a hut of bamboos.