While the Indians, united in council, were deliberating on the means of
attacking the camp of the gold-seekers, let us see how the three men on
the island were occupied.
It was about four o'clock, and the fog was beginning to rise slowly from
the water. Willows and aspens grew on the shores of the river Gila,
within rifle-range of the little island, and so near the water that
their roots were in the river. The spaces between the trees were filled
up by vigorous osier and other shoots; but just in front of the island
was a large open space. This had been made by the troops of wild horses
and buffaloes, that came down to drink at the river; and through this
opening any one on the island could see clearly over the plain.
The little island had been formed originally by trees that had taken
root in the bed of the river; other trees, some green and others without
branches or foliage, had rested against these, and their roots had
become interlaced. Since then, many summers and winters must have
passed; and grasses and sedges, detached from the banks by the water,
had filled up the interstices. Then the dust, brought there by the
wind, had covered these with a crust of earth, and formed a kind of
solid ground for the floating island. Plants had grown along the banks;
the trunks of the willows had sent forth vigorous shoots, and, with the
reeds, had surrounded the island with a fringe of verdure. The island
was only a few feet in diameter; but a man lying, or even kneeling upon
it, was completely hidden by the willow-shoots.
The sun was going down, and a little shade was thrown by the leaves and
trees; in this shade was stretched the form of Fabian asleep. Bois-Rose
seemed to be watching over his sleep, hastily taken after the fatigues
of a long march, while Pepe refreshed himself by plunging in the water.
While Fabian slumbers, we shall raise the veil by which the young Count
hid from the eyes of his two friends his most secret and dearest
thoughts.
After his fall into the torrent, Pepe had forgotten that the enemy on
whom he had sworn vengeance was escaping, and both he and Bois-Rose had
thought only of rendering prompt assistance to Fabian. On returning to
consciousness, Fabian's first thought was to resume his interrupted
pursuit. The acquisition of the Golden Valley, and even the remembrance
of Dona Rosarita, were forgotten by the ardent wish of revenging his
mother.
Pepe, on his side, was not the man to draw back from his vow; and as for
Bois-Rose, his whole affections were centred in his two companions, and
he would have followed them to the end of the world. Their first
failure, far from discouraging them, did but excite their ardour; in
hatred as in love, obstacles are always a powerful stimulant to vigorous
minds. The pursuit had gradually presented a double object to Fabian;
it brought him near to the Golden Valley in the desert; and he nourished
a vague hope that the place pointed out to him was not the same as that
which the expedition led by Antonio de Mediana proposed to conquer.
Fabian said to himself, that the daughter of Don Augustin doubtless only
yielded obedience to the ambitious views of her father, and that it
might yet be easy for him, noble and rich, to win the day against such a
rival as Tragaduros.
Still, discouragement often seized upon Fabian; he loved the daughter of
the haciendado with his whole soul; and the thought of owing her love
only to the treasures that he might possess, distressed him. Moreover,
he felt that the ardent and jealous affection of the Canadian, had
founded on him the sole aim of his life, and that, like the eagle who
carries away his young one and places it in an eyrie, inaccessible to
the hand of man, Bois-Rose, who had forever quitted civilised life,
wished to make of him his inseparable companion in the desert; and that,
to disappoint the old man would be to throw a shadow over his whole
future life. As yet, no confidence as to their future had been
exchanged between them; but in face of a love that he believed hopeless,
and of the ardent, though secret wishes of the man who now acted as a
father to him, and who would half break his heart at a separation,
Fabian had generously and silently sacrificed his tastes and hopes that
would not die. He who had but to hold out his hand to seize the things
that the whole world desires--riches, titles, and honours--was like one
whose life tortured by an unhappy love, disclaiming the future, seeks
within the cloister forgetfulness of the past. For Fabian de Mediana,
the desert was the cloister; and his mother once revenged, it only
remained to him to bury himself in it forever. Sad and inefficacious,
as a remedy, would be solitude, with its mysterious voice, and the
ardent contemplations that it awakens, for a passion so fondly awakened
in the young heart of Fabian.
One single hope remained to him--that amidst the ever-renewed dangers of
an adventurous life, the day was not far distant when his life would be
cut short in some contest with the Indians, or in one of those desperate
attempts that he meditated against the murderer of his mother. He had
carefully hidden from the Canadian the love that he buried in the depths
of his heart; and it was in the silence of the night that he dared to
look into his own bosom. Then, like the light which shines in the
horizon above great cities, and which the traveller contemplates with
joy, a radiant and cherished image rose before his eyes in the desert,
standing on that breach in the wall of the hacienda, where his last
souvenirs carried him. But during the day, the heroic young man tried
to hide under an apparent calm, the melancholy that devoured him. He
smiled, with sad resignation, at those plans for the future which the
Canadian sometimes enlarged on before him--he so happy in having found
him, and who trembled to lose again his beloved Fabian, whose hand he
hoped would one day close his eyes. The blind tenderness of Bois-Rose
did not divine the abyss under the calm surface of the lake, but Pepe
was rather more clear-sighted.
"Well," said Pepe, after a long silence, "the inhabitants of Madrid
would pay dearly for such a stream of water in the Manzanares; but we
have not the less lost a day which might have brought us nearer to the
Golden Valley, and from which we cannot now be far distant."
"I allow that," replied Bois-Rose, "but the child," for so he called the
vigorous young man before them, "is not so accustomed as we are to long
marches, and though sixty leagues in twelve days is not very much for
us, it begins to tell on him. But before he has been a year with us, he
will be able to walk as far as ourselves."
Pepe could not help smiling at this answer, but the Canadian did not
perceive it.
"See," said the Spaniard, pointing to Fabian, "how the poor lad has
changed in a few days. For my part, at his age, I should have preferred
the glance of a damsel and the Puerta del Sol at Madrid to all the
magnificence of the desert. Fatigue alone has not produced this change
in him. There is some secret which he does not tell us, but I will
penetrate it one of these days," added Pepe mentally.
At these words the Canadian turned his head quickly towards his beloved
child, but a smile of joy from Fabian chased away the sudden cloud from
the brow of his adoptive father. Fabian indeed smiled; he was dreaming
that he was on his knees before Rosarita, listening to the sweet voice
of the young girl, who was recounting her anguish during his long
absence, and that Bois-Rose stood behind them leaning on his rifle and
blessing them both. Ah! it was only a dream.
The two hunters looked for a moment silently at the sleeper.
"There lies the last descendant of the Medianas," said Pepe, with a
sigh.
"What care I for the Medianas and their powerful race?" replied the
Canadian. "I know but Fabian. When I saved him, and attached myself to
him as though he had been my own, did I ask about his ancestors?"
"You will wake him if you talk so loud," said Pepe; "your voice roars
like a cataract."
"Why are you always recalling to me things that I do not wish to know,
or rather wish to forget. I know that some years in the desert will
accustom him--"
"You deceive yourself strangely, Bois-Rose, if you imagine that with the
prospects that await him in Spain, and the rights that he can claim,
this young man will consent to pass his whole life in the desert. It is
good for us, but not for him."
"What! is not the desert preferable to cities?" cried the old sailor,
who vainly tried to conceal from himself that Pepe was right. "I
undertake to make him prefer a wandering life to a settled one. Is it
not for movement, for fighting, and for the powerful emotions of the
desert that man is born?"
"Certainly," said Pepe, gravely, "and that is just why the towns are
deserted and the deserts peopled!"
"Do not jest, Pepe; I am speaking of serious things. While I leave
Fabian free to follow his own inclinations, I shall make him love this
captivating life. Is not this short sleep, snatched hastily between two
dangers, preferable to what one tastes after a day of idle security in
the towns. You yourself, Pepe--would _you_ wish to return to your own
country, since you have known the charms of a wandering life?"
"There is between the heir of the Medianas," replied Pepe, "and the old
coast-guard man a great difference. To him will come a fine property, a
great name, and a beautiful Gothic castle with towers like the cathedral
at Burgos; while I should be sent to fish for mackerel at Ceuta--which
is the most execrable life I know of and which I should have but one
chance of escaping from--that of waking some fine morning, at Tunis or
Tetuan, as a slave to our neighbours the Moors. I have here, it is
true, the daily chance of being scalped or burnt alive by the Indians.
Still the town is worse for me--but for Don Fabian--"
"Fabian has always lived in solitude, and will, I trust, prefer the calm
of the desert to the tumult of cities. How solemn and silent is all
around us! See here!" and he pointed to Fabian, "how the child sleeps,
softly lulled by the murmur of the waters, and by the breeze in the
willows. Look there, in the horizon at those fogs just coloured by the
sun, and that boundless space where man wanders in his primitive
liberty, like the birds in the air!"
The Spaniard shook his head doubtfully, although he partook the ideas of
the Canadian, and like him felt the charm of this wandering life.
"Look," continued the old hunter, "at that troop of wild horses coming
down to drink before going for the night to their distant pasturage.
See how they approach in all the proud beauty that God gives to free
animals--ardent eyes, open nostrils, and floating manes! Ah! I should
almost like to awake Fabian in order that he might see and admire them."
"Let him sleep, Bois-Rose; perhaps his dreams show him more graceful
forms than those horses of the desert--forms such as abound in our
Spanish towns, in balconies or behind barred windows."