To young Watson it seemed that events were now following one another
with the dizzy rapidity and the absurd lack of logical sequence
characteristic of a dream, or of something equally independent of time
and space.
First came shots; then there passed before his eyes several riders, some
of them advancing at a gallop, while others, halting, fired at the
mountaineers. In vain Piola raised both hands in the air, shouting,
“Don’t shoot, brother, we surrender!”
The men just arriving didn’t want to hear and went on firing in spite of
Robledo’s shouts.
Piola’s comrade fell wounded; and at this Piola himself thought it
advisable to fall to the ground and take refuge behind his horse.
The whole group of horsemen from La Presa were finally assembled on the
same plateau in front of the ranch house; but Watson paid not the
slightest attention to Robledo’s exclamations of astonishment at finding
him there. Nor did he waste any time on the _comisario’s_ salutations.
Anyway these two recent arrivals promptly forgot him, and went to see
what information they could get out of Piola by placing their revolver
muzzles against his chest, while they demanded that he tell them what
had been done with Celinda. Some of the other members of the rescue
party dismounted to have a look at the man just wounded, as well as at
the one hit a few minutes earlier by don Carlos.
What most attracted Watson’s attention in the whole strange scene was
the presence of his own horse there, with Cachafaz importantly
straddling him and pointing accusingly at the three prisoners.
“It was those bad _gauchos_ who took away my _patroncita_! I saw them!”
But he was inconsiderately interrupted, for someone grasped him round
the waist and rudely robbed him of the dignity of his commanding
position by setting him down on the sand.
With a determined effort to pay no attention to the pain it caused him,
Richard had made use of his one serviceable arm to get possession of his
horse. The animal recognized the feel of his master in the saddle, and
needed no spurring to start off at full gallop in the direction taken by
Rojas.
The rancher had already been in close pursuit of Manos Duras for several
minutes, and he had not given up hopes of overtaking him. It was
difficult to keep the horses at a gallop on those sandy slopes, and
besides, the animal Manos Duras rode had two burdens to carry; and all
the while he was spurring on his horse the bandit had to keep tight hold
of the still unsubdued Celinda. Rojas had the advantage of two free
hands as he gave chase.
The _gaucho_ turned around several times, taking aim with the revolver
he held in his left hand. Two bullets whistled past don Carlos. He
replied with two bullets, then stopped. He had just discovered that he
had only three more cartridges. That morning when he had started out
for La Presa he had strapped on his holster case without filling the
empty sockets. Only three shots more! But he had the knife he always
carried for the emergencies that might arise as he rode over his
property in his belt.... Besides, shooting was dangerous. He might wound
Celinda.
The _gaucho_, better supplied with shot, went on firing with great
lavishness as he sped away.
An overwhelming indignation swept through the rancher as he perceived
what Manos Duras was attempting to do.
“Shameless cattle thief! He’s aiming at my horse!”
And to the horse-loving creole, this was as despicable a crime, as just
a cause for unlimited vengeance, as the injury done him, don Carlos
Rojas, by robbing him of his daughter.
But in a few moments the rancher, who rode a horse as though moulded to
it, felt a mortal shudder under him. Instantly he lifted his feet from
the stirrups and jumped to the ground, but scarcely had his foot touched
the sand when the animal fell heavily, a stream of blood pouring out of
his breast like the crimson spurtings of a shattered wine cask.
The rancher stood by helplessly while the bandit sped away, holding
Celinda down on the saddle-tree.... Then he concentrated all his will on
the hand that held his revolver. He must kill the bandit’s horse.
And the man trembled with emotion. Not all his combats with men and wild
beasts had prepared him for this. How could he, to whom a horse was like
a child of his flesh, shoot one down in cold blood?... But there,
growing smaller in the increasing distance, was Celinda, struggling,
crying out!
He was, as a rule, a sure shot. But he fired without effect; and again
he fired. The _gaucho_ still sped on, and don Carlos raised his revolver
for the last shot. Suddenly Manos Duras’s horse staggered, slowed down
and plunged to the ground, raising a cloud of dust in a last frenzied
kick.
Rojas ran forward; but before he reached the struggling group Manos
Duras had already extricated himself from the saddle, and, still holding
Celinda, stood waiting for him, his second revolver drawn.
Don Carlos went a few steps further; but the shot that rang out passed
so near his cheek that for a moment he thought it must have caught him.
He dropped to the ground in order to offer the marksman a smaller
target, and dragged himself along, keeping his revolver in his left
hand. The _gaucho_, unaware that his enemy had but one shot left,
thought it was don Carlos’ intention to draw nearer so as to make sure
of the effect of his bullets, and he went on firing, holding Celinda in
front of him the while as a shield against her father’s shots. But the
girl’s struggles to free herself from the grip of that sinewy arm shook
his hand and spoiled the bandit’s aim.
“If you try one more shot, old man, I kill your daughter!”
This warning, added to the knowledge that he had but one more bullet in
his cartridge chamber, forced don Carlos to content himself with slowly
crawling forward over the sand, seeking the shelter of the hummocks on
its surface.
But meanwhile Manos Duras became instinctively aware of the presence of
a new danger. He looked about attempting to discover it; but the one
menacing him from in front soon called for all his attention.
The invisible enemy recently arrived was Watson, who, when he heard
shots, dismounted, and under cover of the rough desert brush, advanced
Indian-fashion towards the scene of the revolver duel.
For a moment he felt tempted to fire from the back at Manos Duras; but
there was danger of his wounding Celinda whose movements could not be
counted on. So he returned to his horse and detached from the saddle the
lassoo that the _señorita_ de Rojas had given him. Holding it in his
right hand, he circled about through the _matorrales_ until he was
directly behind the bandit.
Going even this short distance caused him acute pain. Several times the
thorny branches of the harsh desert growths caught at his wounded
shoulder, and uncertainty made him tremble with nervousness. Would he
have sufficient skill to use this primitive weapon?
He was troubled at recalling how _Flor de Rio Negro_ had laughed at him,
in childish enjoyment of his clumsiness; but the memory of the happy
rides they had had together, and the sight of her now in close peril of
death or worse, brought his energy flooding back; and some of the
principles instilled in him as a boy, and the methodical, practical
spirit of his race, came to stiffen his courage. “Whatever you do, do it
well” ... somehow that seemed to the point. Confiding in the mysterious
and intangible powers that control our lives, and that from time to
time, show an inexplicable preference for some of us, and protect us
from apparently inescapable dangers, Richard threw his rope, almost
without looking, trusting to his luck and his sure sense of distance.
Then he began pulling in, backing his horse in the brush. At the sudden
resistance of the lariat, he felt the joyful assurance that he had
caught his game. So savage was his joy that he pulled with both hands,
though several groans escaped him for the pain he felt from the
laceration of his shoulder.
And as a matter of fact the rope had caught both Manos Duras and
Celinda, and suddenly they both tumbled backwards under the impact of a
sudden pull.
The _gaucho_ let go of Celinda so as to free both hands. Even while he
was being drawn along the ground he managed to get at his knife, and cut
the rope that bound him. But Watson had foreseen this, and running
forward, dealt him several blows on the head with the butt of his
revolver. Rojas meanwhile reached the tussling group and throwing his
now useless weapon down, grasped his knife.
“Leave him to me, _gringo_!” he gasped. “I don’t want anybody to take
this job from me.... I have a right to it!”
He pushed Watson vigorously out of the way, and the latter turned to
Celinda, picked her up from the ground and carried her off to a distance
of a few yards. She was so stunned by the fall that she did not
recognize him, but stood, passing her hands over her forehead, and
gazing blankly about her, while blood tricked from the cuts on her arms
and face.
Don Carlos meanwhile was almost helping Manos Duras to get to his feet.
“Stand up, son of evil!... Or you’ll be saying that I am killing you
without giving you a chance! Get out your knife, and fight, damn your
soul!”
Manos Duras as a matter of fact already held his knife in his hand, but
the rancher, beside himself at finally having the _gaucho_ within reach,
had not noticed it.
But scarcely had the bandit got a footing than he treacherously made a
plunge toward his pursuer, trying to stab him below the belt. However,
the blows dealt him by Watson had dazed him sufficiently to slow up all
his movements, and the rancher had time to parry the blow with a back
stroke of his left hand. Then don Carlos landed a thrust on the bandit’s
chest, and another and another, in such swift succession that Manos
Duras, blood pouring out from the numerous gashes he had just received,
toppled over....
“The puma’s done for!” shouted don Carlos, holding up his blood dripping
knife. The bandit, writhing at his feet, was uttering snorts of an agony
that could only end in death.
Watson had led Celinda a certain distance away so that she should not
witness this scene; but he had kept close watch of what was going on,
ready to lend help if don Carlos should need it.
The two men helped Celinda to the spot where Watson had left his horse;
in their anxiety lest she should see the bandit in his death agony, they
almost carried her between them. But still dazed by the rapid succession
of events, the girl looked about with vague dilated eyes as though she
recognized nothing in her surroundings. Finally she burst into tears,
and threw her arms about her father. Then, entirely unmindful of the
attitude she maintained towards him when she was quite herself, she
threw her arms about Watson, too, and kissed him.
Stirred by her unexpected caress, and distressed by the sight of the
scratches and cuts on the girl’s face, Richard asked, anxiously,
“Did I hurt you, Miss Rojas?... But don’t you think I managed a little
better with the lariat this time?”
Then the two men helped Celinda get on the horse and walked along beside
her to Dead Indian ranch.
At sight of them, Robledo and the commissioner came out with a joyful
welcome. In front of the ranch house stood the other men of the
expedition, who, after attending in their own way to the wounds of their
captives, were keeping watch over them, as well as over Piola. It had
been decided to take them all to the jail in the capital of the
territory on the very next day.
Meanwhile, Celinda, finding herself once more among friends, who were
eagerly expressing their delight at her rescue, began to recover her
usual spirits. She tried to hide her face from Watson, so that he
shouldn’t see all the cuts that disfigured it; but at the same time she
eyed him with a new tenderness.
“Did I really hurt you, ... Celinda?” the youth kept asking in an
imploring tone, as though his emotions would not at the moment permit of
his saying anything else. “But didn’t I do better with the lassoo?
Didn’t I?”
After glancing about to see whether her father were near enough to
overhear, she murmured, imitating his foreign accent,
“Clumsy _gringo_! Great big stupid! I should say you _did_ hurt me, and
you manage a lassoo as badly as possible.... But never mind! As long as
you caught that bad man with me, and as long as I said that you’d have
to catch me that way if you wanted me ... here I am!”
And puckering up her lips she blew him a kiss, as a kind of promise of
what his reward would be when later they should find means of being
alone.
At dusk the expedition reached La Presa, after a short halt at the Rojas
ranch where they found Sebastiana. The half-breed, at sight of her young
mistress, burst out into loud exclamations of joy, which later were
transformed into cries of indignation when she saw the marks on
Celinda’s face. In the midst of her indignant vituperations, the
_marquesa’s_ name escaped her, in spite of Robledo’s commands to her
that she be discreet. And finally she ended up by telling Rojas all that
she knew of the interview between the “_señorona_” and Manos Duras, and
of all that she suspected it signified.
Sebastiana, quite as a matter of course, decided to remain at the ranch,
and did not consider it necessary to ask don Carlos’ permission to do
so. The rancher himself, however, urged Watson to stay with him until
the following day, when he would accompany his guest to town.
“I have some urgent business to attend to at La Presa, just a few things
to say to a certain person there,” said don Carlos in a voice so soft
it was terrifying to hear. Robledo divining his intentions tried to
dissuade him from the trip.
“Leave me alone, don Manuel. I’m going to see that woman. You know what
she tried to do to my girl. All I want is to pick up her skirts and give
her a thrashing with this whip of mine, so....”
And he snapped the leather thong of his short riding-whip.
Convinced finally that there was no deterring don Carlos from his
purpose, Robledo finally consented to being accompanied by him to the
settlement. The fury of his combat with the _gaucho_ had not yet abated
in Celinda’s father, but Robledo hoped that within a few hours it would
have subsided a little.
When they reached the main street, the rescue party found nearly the
whole population of La Presa assembled to meet them. The men, riding
ahead, gave out the news of the skirmish as they passed by the different
groups and their words sped through the crowd with startling rapidity.
There was general and frankly expressed rejoicing at the death of Manos
Duras, as though the town had by that event been freed from a dangerous
menace. Some of the men went so far as to lament the fact that the
_comisario_ should have left the three prisoners under guard at Dead
Squaw ranch until they could be conveyed to the prison of the territory.
With that ferocity which always manifests itself in a crowd when finally
it has been liberated from something that it feared, the men and women
who had gathered to hear the news would have liked to tear these friends
of the dead _gaucho’s_ to pieces, in order to be avenged for the terror
he had inspired in them when he was alive.
Suddenly the throng caught at something that promised the satisfaction
of its most ferocious instincts. A few of Sebastiana’s words were
repeated, and in a twinkling the whole story was out. So it was the
great _señora_, the “_señorona_” who, with Manos Duras, had planned this
terrible act of vengeance! A vengeance which seemed more like the
horrible things they had heard tell of, or that they themselves had seen
in the movies, than anything they had ever witnessed in actual life. To
think that that white-skinned _gringa_ had tried to kill the ranch girl,
their own _Flor de Rio Negro_, daughter of the land and the friend of
every one of them!
Robledo, on horseback, moving back and forth from one group to another,
guessed from a few phrases caught at random that the anger rising
rapidly in the crowd was assuming dangerous proportions. At that very
moment they were passing poor Pirovani’s former dwelling. Some of the
women began crying out shrilly as they looked up at the windows.
“Down with the painted face! Death to the murderous she-dog!”
The worst insults in their feminine vocabularies were hurled through the
air. Anticipating what was going to happen, Robledo changed his course
and went up to the house, backing his horse up against the outside
steps. But for once not even those men who were most loyal to him
supported him in his purpose.
Heedless of his advice as of his commands, women and children dove under
his horse or slipped behind its flanks, and the invading movement
having been started, the men thronged into the basement of the house,
apologizing, with a lift of their caps, as they passed in front of the
engineer.
The assault of the enemy’s quarters was very rapid, every obstacle in
the way of the invaders being overcome with that ease which seems
characteristic of popular attacks on days of successful revolutionary
outbreaks. The front door fell in, shattered by a few determined blows,
and the human tide eddied for a moment around the opening, then, in
surge after surge, swept into the house. Broken panes fell out of the
windows, followed by all manner of projectiles, furniture, clothes,
dishes, and in vain did some of the more moderate members of the crowd
protest against this senseless destruction.
“But this isn’t _her_ house,” they were repeating. “This all belongs to
don Enrique, the Italian!”
The crowd however turned a deaf ear. It preferred to believe that
everything there _did_ belong to the “_señorona_,” so as to be able to
vent its rage without scrupling about other people’s property. And all
the while they screamed out insults, in the hope that their words would
scorch the “_señorona’s_” ears, just as they hoped that their hands
might tear at her flesh.
But finally Robledo, still on his horse, calling out orders that went
unobeyed, succeeded in gaining the attention of the crowd which had
grown tired of its work of destruction. Its energies had suddenly
diminished at discovering that its hoped-for victim was no longer within
reach; but the real reason for its subsiding into a relative silence
which allowed Robledo to make himself heard, was the arrival of an old
Spanish laborer who had retired from the works at the dam in order to
carry on the business of delivering water to his customers in the town.
Prodding and cursing at the miserable old nag that unwillingly drew his
ramshackle cart, containing a water-tank, he daily made the rounds of La
Presa; and from this conveyance he now began haranguing the mob at
Pirovani’s.
“What are you doing here, blunder-heads? She’s gone!” he yelled shrilly.
“I saw her in a carriage with the señor Moreno, the government fellow.
They were on their way to the station to take the train to Buenos
Aires.”
At once some of the men who had horses within reach offered to start off
in pursuit. They had lost a good deal of time, but perhaps if they rode
without any regard for their mounts they might get to Fuerte Sarmiento
in time to catch the fugitive....
But some of the others shook their heads. The train would go by within
less than an hour, and as it started out from the neighboring town, it
rarely reached Fuerte Sarmiento late.
But the women were insistent. Let the men who had horses try to get to
the station and let them drag the “_señorona_” back by the hair ... and
while they were screaming out what they would do if they had their way,
some of the males of the party were expressing the opinion that it would
be an excellent plan to take up a position along the railway track, and
when the train came by, shoot.... They appeared to have quite overlooked
the fact which Robledo tried to point out to them, that even if they
knew which particular coach contained the _marquesa_, there would be
other travellers in it, whom they would have little excuse for
murdering.
Hoarse with shouting, and convinced finally that the hated woman was now
beyond their reach, they lapsed into glum silence.
Robledo seized his opportunity.
“Let her go. When she goes, Gualicho goes, and he’s troubled us enough.
What we want is to keep this demon from ever coming back. If only he had
been driven out long ago!”
As twilight deepened, the mob grew calmer. Supper time came, and even
some of the most excitable members of the crowd decided to continue
their discussion of the story either at their own homes, or at the
_Gallego’s boliche_.
Rojas, plunged in gloom, had apparently forgotten all the other events
of the day, and could think of nothing but Elena’s having escaped him.
“But you don’t know how I feel about it, don Manuel!... I had something
to say to her, by means of a whip.”
And with a gesture indicating how he would have done it, he went on
explaining just what he considered justice would have demanded that he
do to the _marquesa_.
From that day on, life in La Presa became a monotonous series of anxious
days. Robledo was the only person of any importance left in the
community. As operations at the dam remained suspended, the workmen
began to drift away. Some of them, less impatient, spent their days in
idleness, talking of the prospects of the Government’s ordering the
works to begin again “next week.” But the order never arrived. Down
there at Buenos Aires they were taking their time to consider the
matter, and as the months went by, one after another of the workmen lost
patience, and finally took up his pack again to escape, either on foot
or by rail, from a place where there was no money coming in and where
poverty was gaining headway like a plague.
The _boliche_ had taken on a funereal appearance. Only a few of the old
customers still came to toss off a drink before the _Gallego’s_ counter.
These were all men of assured solvency, don Antonio having abruptly cut
off the credit of all his other customers; to back up this resolve he
kept a revolver in his money drawer, and his handsome American rifle
under his chair. When out of funds, his patrons amply justified all
these precautions.
“You ought to go to Buenos Aires, don Manuel,” he kept saying hopefully
to Robledo. “You’re the only man from these parts they’ll listen to up
there.”
The engineer, however, was as disheartened and gloomy as his
surroundings. The only thing that ever drew a smile from him was the
changed aspect of his partner. Watson had suddenly developed a
cheerfulness which seemed to indicate that the fate of his once beloved
canals was nothing to him now. According to his frank confession, the
only subject that interested him was cattle raising, and he spent all of
his days at the Rojas ranch.
What was the momentary paralysis of the works at the dam to him! He was
young, most of his life stretching ahead of him. Why not study
cattle-farming in the meantime, especially as he had _Flor de Rio Negro_
to teach him, as she rode by his side through her father’s fields from
sunrise to sundown?
But an incident that occurred shortly after Elena’s flight had tinged
everything with black melancholy for Robledo. Gonzalez had brought him a
hat that one of his compatriots had found near the river, at a distance
from the camp. The engineer had recognized it at once. It was Torre
Bianca’s.
For some time he had felt certain that his friend was no longer alive.
Often at night, when the financial difficulties in which the works were
involved kept him awake, he reconstructed the events which one morning
at dawn had made Elena’s husband leave the house of the friend with whom
he had taken refuge.
There could be little doubt now. Torre Bianca’s body must be at the
bottom of the river.
And so it proved. The owner of the _boliche_ came to him again to tell
him of the discovery made by some of the men who, being out of work, had
gone fishing two leagues down the river. Near a reed-encircled island
they expected to find some of the trout that often came down stream from
Lake Nahuel-Huapi. And among the reeds they had noticed two long black
objects swayed by the ripples--the legs of a drowned man.
Robledo had not the heart to examine the body, but his compatriot
Gonzalez found evidence from the clothing that the drowned man was Torre
Bianca.
After this, Robledo felt more inclined to yield to the _Gallego’s_
insistent urgings that he go to Buenos Aires to make a plea for the
continuance of the work on the dam. Recognizing the possibility of his
being more useful to the despairing community in Buenos Aires than at La
Presa, he started off for the capital and spent several months there,
going from one government office to another, struggling with the
entanglements of administrative red tape, and making a determined effort
to provide resources in order to maintain his credit at the banks. But
to his dismay he found that the business men who had up to that time
given their support to his enterprise, were unwilling to put more money
into the work, and little by little he became aware of the general
distrust felt of everything connected with La Presa.
Winter came, and Robledo had not yet accomplished enough to feel
justified in leaving Buenos Aires. There were days when, in a sudden
spurt of optimism, he had hopes of accomplishing his purpose within the
week. But when, armed with a new argument, he presented himself at the
government bureaus, he was met with the set phrase, “Come back
tomorrow.” And the tomorrow they meant, as he came to discover, was not
the tomorrow following today, but something vague and nebulous in the
future, a tomorrow that would never dawn.
One morning the papers brought news of the uneasiness felt in the river
towns, at the unprecedentedly rapid rise of the _Rio Negro_. The
tributary streams were all bringing down enormous quantities of water
and it seemed impossible that the banks of the larger stream should be
able to contain the rapidly rising torrent. And this was the state of
things that he had come to warn the government about, this was the
condition that his dam, had it been nearer completion, would have been
able to control!
Then came a telegram from his friends in La Presa, excitedly imploring
that he come back, as though his presence possessed a miraculous power
over the forces of nature itself.
He reached the town during a spell of icy cold that made him shiver in
the fur-lined coat he had worn during the sharpest days of the winter.
The streets of the town were deserted. The houses of wooden
construction, best fitted to keep out the cold, kept their windows and
doors tight shut. The roofs of the adobe buildings were crumbling, and
the hurricanes from the plateau-lands had torn out the wooden frames of
the windows. There was no one in sight! The only inhabitants of the
place were those who had been there before the dam had been begun. To
the engineer’s eyes the place looked as though ten years had elapsed
since he had left it.
For days at a time he stood on the bank watching the growing volume of
water in the great stream. Then the current began bringing down trees
from the upper reaches of the river, and Robledo’s helpless indignation
grew as he saw the danger to which all the lower river country was
exposed increasing hourly. And now it was no longer trees torn from the
slopes of the giant Andes, but great round enormous boulders, hidden
from view, on the sandy bottom, that the stream rolled furiously along
down stream.
It was not so much the danger of flood that worried Robledo as the
probable fate of the unfinished wall of the dam. Each morning, with the
methodical care of a doctor testing his patient, he examined the great
dike thrown from bank to bank, the magnificent dam which, so well
planned and constructed, had been left unfinished by its builders, first
because of their absorbing love affairs, then because of their mortal
rivalry.
The wider arm of the dam had been completed to within a few feet of the
smaller one, and over these two walls the rising waters poured their
volume, marking the place of the submerged obstructions with whirlpools
and hissing foam.
Like all men who lead a life of danger, Robledo began to be
superstitious, and as he watched the peril that was assuming gigantic
proportions, he found himself addressing vague, mysterious divinities,
imploring them to wreak a miracle.
“If only we can get through this winter without seeing this wall crash,”
he thought. “What luck ...!”
But one morning, quite as though it were one of these sand walls that
children spend hours building, and then break down at one capricious
blow, the flooding waters snapped off one end of the unfinished arm, and
then broke it up as though it were the least cohesive and resistant of
substances; and finally, those two submerged walls, in the building of
which hundreds of men and thousands of tons of heavy, hard materials had
been employed, those walls that had seemed as immovable as the
mountains, rolled outward, then down stream, crumbling as they went, to
be tossed in fragments on the banks and on the shores of the reed-grown
islands.
Robledo threw himself down on the ground in a paroxysm of weeping. Four
years of work had melted away like so much sugar before his eyes. “All
to do over again ... from the very beginning!”
His fellow countryman, the owner of the _boliche_, saw ruin staring him
in the face also. In that once prosperous establishment the money-drawer
beside the counter was now empty; and with his customers had vanished
all his hopes of transforming his sandy acres into fertile irrigated
fields. He was a poor man now, poorer than when he had come to find his
fortune in this accursed spot!
The _Gallego_ was plunged in heavy gloom; but his faith in Robledo, and
his desire to cheer him up, made the store-keeper try to appear
optimistic.
“It will all come right some time,” he would say over and over again,
but without conviction.
Don Manuel, however, as he watched the merciless stream continue its
work of destruction, felt rage growing within him. He no longer watched
the river. His eyes had the vague expression of one whose thoughts have
wandered far, who sees what is hidden to others.
Canterac and Pirovani appeared before his mind’s eye as clear and
distinct as though he had seen them only the day before. And then came a
woman’s face, smiling, but with the look of one intent on mischief in
her tawny eyes.
Through time and space this woman exerted her evil influence on this
distant corner of the globe. She, not nature’s forces, was the real
destroyer of the work of many men.
Robledo clenched his fists. He thought of Rojas, and of how the rancher
had wanted to punish this woman with whip-lashings. At that moment he
would have devised for her something far worse.
“Gualicho, accursed Gualicho! Betrayer and tormentor of men, destroyer
of men and of things!... perish the evil hour in which I brought you
here!”