Ramirez! Ashley’s heart bounded, his brain throbbed dizzily yet acutely.
Here was no obscure assassin, who once escaping him would perhaps be
lost forever.
The name was on every lip with those of Juarez, Ortega, Degollado,
Miramon, and a score of other popular chieftains who of one party or
another, or of independent factions, attracted to themselves a host of
followers, more by their own personal magnetism than for the sake of any
principles they represented. In that time of anarchy any head that rose
above the common herd led enthusiastic multitudes, who followed a nod
and applauded to the echo even one deed of daring. But Ramirez held his
prestige by no such recent and uncertain tenure; throughout the long
years of revolution he had been a central figure in the bloody drama.
Even his recent defeat at El Toro and his subsequent disappearance had
added but a fresh glamor of mystery to his adventurous career, without
detracting from the almost superstitious awe with which he was regarded.
It was believed that he would reappear when and where least expected.
Ashley Ward had smiled covertly at the strange and daring escapades
attributed to this man. He had become in his mind a figure of romance;
and here in the broad day he had risen before him, the self-denounced
murderer of John Ashley,—and as suddenly as he had come, so had he
escaped him.
Thinking no more of the cross, which had fallen upon the ground, hiding
beneath it the name that had been so long preserved for so strange a
purpose, Ashley Ward turned from the sunken graves and striding across
the mounds, scarred and broken by the sacrilegious tread of the horses’
feet, stood for a moment upon the broken wall, scanning the country in
his excitement for some sign of the desperate men who but a few moments
before had urged their restive steeds up the steep path and disappeared
over the crest of the hill. He saw his own recreant steed galloping
toward the hacienda walls, keeping the high-road, on past the
reduction-works and the long stretch of open country beyond, and
plunging and rearing at the fatal mesquite-tree. The superstitious
vaqueros had instinctively imbued their animals with the same irrational
terrors in which they had themselves been trained. Yet no sight of ghost
or smell of blood lingered there to rouse memory or vengeance. Their
waiting-place had been that long-forgotten grave upon the desolate
hillside.
Ashley leaped from the wall and rapidly began the descent to the valley.
The sun was still high in the heavens, for the scene we have recorded
had passed in less than a brief quarter of an hour. As he walked on,
gradually falling into a more natural pace, the whole matter took
definite form and coherence in his mind. That which had been so
unexpected, so unnatural, seemed to be the event to which his whole
journey to Mexico, all his wanderings, his strange and wearisome
experiences, had inevitably and naturally tended. And then arose a point
beyond. His work at Tres Hermanos seemed ended; the primal cause of his
being there was forgotten. The definite thought now in his mind was to
reach the hacienda, provide himself anew with horse, guide, and arms,
and follow on the path which Ramirez had chosen, and upon which he would
sooner or later re-appear, decoyed by the rich booty that Doña Isabel
had intrusted to the weak and presumably faithless Ruiz. Could he reach
and warn her in time?
Ashley’s scarce-healed wound was throbbing painfully, the way was long,
the heat intense; yet he pressed on resolutely, though at last he
staggered as he went. He sat down to rest awhile among the dry rushes of
the spent watercourse, under a straggling cottonwood-tree, the few poor
leaves of which scarcely sufficed to shade him from the fierce rays of
the sun. A fever heat was in his veins; wild theories and speculations
passed through his brain,—some of them, perhaps, not far from being keys
to the mystery of that tragedy which that day for the first time had
become to his mind other than a vague and gloomy fantasy. Now, like the
murderer himself, it was real, absorbing, appalling.
The young man rose and again pressed on. After the descent to the long
rude wall of the reduction-works, he skirted it slowly, thinking as he
went how changed the aspect of the place must be since his cousin had
ridden forth to his death. How proudly John had written, and almost
vauntingly, of the prosperity his management had inaugurated, of the
crowds of laden animals that passed in and out of the wide gates, of the
men who led their slow, laborious lives among those primitive mills and
wide floors of trodden ores.
Ashley glanced at the great square mass of walls and towers of Tres
Hermanos, glistening in the distance. To his weary eye it looked far
away; yet doubtless he thought it had been but the ride of a few eager
minutes to the lover, as he went at midnight to cast a glance at the
walls that circled his mistress, or to rein his horse beneath her window
that he might win a word or glance from her who whispered from above.
These, Ashley had heard, were lovers’ ways in Mexico; he did not know
that no maiden of Tres Hermanos ever occupied one of the few apartments
whose windows opened toward the outer air. Yet as he debated the matter
with himself, it became more and more probable to him that John Ashley
had upon the fatal night been actually within the walls of the hacienda,
and been stealthily followed thence by his treacherous rival,—for what,
he thought, even to a Spaniard, could justify so foul a murder but the
falseness of his mistress, the triumph of a hated rival? Pedro’s
taciturnity and gloom Ashley construed as proofs of his complicity in
the crime. Even then Ramirez had been a chieftain of renown, and Pedro
in his youth had been a soldier, a free rider, of whom strange tales
were told. Was it not probable that he had opened the gate at a
comrade’s bidding,—or, more likely still, had bidden him wait beneath
the tree where the favored lover was wont to mount his horse, and so
take him unawares? Ashley remembered that such, it had been said, had
been the manner of his cousin’s taking off. He had been slain with the
swiftness and sureness of a secret and unhesitating avenger.
The ardent youth railed at the mocking chances that had combined to
suffer Ramirez to escape him in the unpremeditated struggle in which
they had clinched with a deadly enmity. In such a struggle he could have
found himself the victor without remorse, or could have died without
regret; but it was not in his nature to follow a man for blood. Yet
neither could he shut his ears to that cry for vengeance, for justice,
which seemed ringing through the sultry stillness,—the more importunate
as the possibilities of their attainment shaped themselves in his mind.
That this must be a personal matter between himself and Ramirez was
clear. At any time it would probably have been useless for an alien to
have denounced so popular and influential a man as the proud and daring
_revolucionario_. To attempt his arrest for a murder committed years
before and probably in rivalry for a lady’s favor, would be but to throw
a new mystery about him, and add a fresh legend of romance to those
which already made him rather a character of ideal chivalry than of mere
vulgar, every-day lawlessness and semi-barbarity. Though the brilliant
adventurer was now under a temporary cloud, one threat of attack from
law would make him again a popular idol; indeed it was likely that a
_pronunciamiento_ in his favor would be the immediate result, and that
in falling into his hands the American would lose, if not his life, at
least all opportunity either of obtaining the satisfaction of the law
for his cousin’s death, or of investigating further those doubts and
probabilities which he had forgotten, but which now came upon him with
redoubled force.
The excited Ashley planned in his mind to refresh himself upon reaching
the hacienda, and demanding horse and guide to set forth upon that very
night, hoping to rejoin the force at daybreak. It was useless, he
reflected, to waste further time in idle questionings. It was to Doña
Isabel herself he would appeal, and warning her of the danger that
threatened her from the bandit chieftain, induce her to make common
cause with him against one who for years must have been their common
enemy. Impossible was it for him to solve the mystery of the relations
in which the several actors in this strange drama in which he was so
unexpectedly taking part, stood either to one another, or to himself.
There was but one fact certain; by that alone he could connect himself
with beings who seemed almost of another world,—the one undoubted fact
of the discovery of John Ashley’s murderer.
Ashley’s ready apprehension of the public mind had been helped by what
he knew to be the actual state of affairs in the ranks to which Doña
Isabel had intrusted the safety of her person, trusting to the resources
which were at her command, and to the present ascendency of Gonzales, to
bind those soldiers of fortune to the cause she had espoused. Perhaps
none knew better than she the elements that an alluring chance of gain
or a transient enthusiasm had drawn together; but she could not know how
near the fire lay to the straw, and how at her very side were those who
in the name of patriotism—or, like Chinita, for a personal sentiment as
unexplainable as it was imaginative and ardent—would sacrifice her
dearest plans, and think it a grand and noble deed to raise the
ubiquitous and dashing Ramirez upon the fall of the slow and cautious
Gonzales. Ashley had imperfectly comprehended the scheme or its
bearings; he had little understood, and felt but little interest in,
those strange complexities and personalities of Mexican politics; but
now a sudden party zeal and horror of treason seized him. Where was
Pedro Gomez, who, having played traitor once, might do so a hundred
times more? Where was Pepé? Had he rejoined the troops, or had the
detour to the graveyard been but a clever plan for eluding them? Were
these, and perhaps Ruiz too, the tools of Ramirez? Yet the latter had
appeared to have ridden far; the news of the gathering and departure of
the troops had appeared to have astounded as much as it had enraged him.
Who had carried the news to Reyes?
The way was long and the youth’s excitement waning; his recent illness
and still aching wound began to declare their effects. In his full vigor
Ashley Ward would have found the walk under the glaring sunshine—which,
though no longer vertical, was fierce and blinding as it neared the
western hilltops—more than he would have chosen for an afternoon’s
stroll. Weak as he was, and becoming painfully conscious that he had
fasted since morning, he was glad to lean sometimes against the high
adobe wall and measure with his eye the slowly decreasing distance. It
was a landmark on his way when he caught sight of the heavy gate set in
the wall of the reduction-works; he knew then just how much farther he
must go. He had no thought of actually approaching it, but he noticed
with surprise that one heavy valve was slightly ajar; and with that
sudden collapse which is apt to assail the overtasked frame at the
unexpected sight of an open door, however meagre the entertainment it
may suggest, he dragged himself onward with the natural belief that he
should find within some servant or attaché of the great house. But when
he reached the gate and looked through the narrow aperture, a perfect
stillness reigned within. No horse stamped in the courtyard; no spurred
heel rang on the pavement. Great cacti were pushing their gaunt and
prickly branches into the narrow space, as if stretching longing arms
out into the wide world from which they had been so long shut in.
With some effort Ashley thrust back the strong and aggressive barrier,
and forced his way in. Rank grass, which was at that season yellow and
matted, had grown up between the cobble-stones, and raised them in
little heaps, over which the lizards ran. One—fiery red—stopped as
Ashley’s boot-heel woke the echoes, and turned a wondering ear, then
glided swiftly on.
Between the main building and the offices there was a small arched
lobby, through which one entered the great court, upon which piles of
broken ores and the long dried masses were spread. In this lobby in the
olden time the workmen had been stopped by the watchman or gatekeeper
and searched,—a proceeding to which they daily submitted with
indifference, holding their arms on high while the practised searcher
ran his hands over their thin and scanty garments, shook out the coarse
serape and tattered sombrero, peered among the rows of glistening teeth
and under the tongue, for those fragments of rich ore or amalgam which
in spite of all precautions, or by the connivance of the searcher,
reached the outer world, netting in the aggregate a considerable surplus
to the income of the laborers, which found its way to the gambling
tables, or was spent in the adornment of their wives,—as was proved by
the great decline in the village of the manufacture of filagree
ornaments of quaint and delicate designs upon the closing of the Garcia
mining-works.
Ashley, with a feeling of curiosity or a sense of impending action,
which renewed his strength as a tonic might have done, noticed that the
door upon the side of the lobby that opened into the main building or
living rooms was also ajar. He glanced in, but except where the long ray
of light stole in through the aperture, which his person partially
obscured, all was so dim that he saw only imperfectly a few scattered
articles of furniture,—and they appeared to be so old and battered that
they were scarce worth the protection which the great padlock and rusty
key, hanging from a staple in the door, indicated had been afforded
them.
With a feeling of awe, Ashley remembered that his cousin must have
lived, and perhaps had lain dead, in that room. With nervous energy he
thrust open the door, and the light streamed in. He started as his eyes
fell upon the floor. It was of large square bricks, thickly spread with
the dust of many years, but impressed with footprints so blurred that,
dazzled as his eyes were, he could not tell whether they were those of
man, woman, or child. They seemed mysterious, ghostly. There was no
sound of human presence. His heart beat as it had not done in all the
excitement of that day.
“I am here! I have been waiting as you bade me,” said a low, frightened
voice. The words came so unexpectedly that Ashley scarce understood
them. He stepped forward and glanced around searchingly. In the farther
corner of the room a female figure was in the act of rising from a low
seat on which it had crouched. The face was half-averted, the dark
reboso was drawn over it with the left hand, the right was outstretched
as if in supplicating, almost compulsory, welcome.
“Good God!”—“_Dios mio!_” The ejaculations were simultaneous; the girl
sank to the floor, the young man involuntarily drew back.
“Señorita!” he exclaimed in a voice of incredulity, “Señorita, you here
and alone?”
“_Maria Sanctissima!_ not the General Ramirez!” he heard her moan; yet
in the fright and confusion there seemed an accent of relief. “Don
’Guardo! Oh, what has brought you here? Oh, Señor, believe me—”
“Do not distress yourself to explain, Señorita,” interrupted Ashley,
coldly. “Rise, I beg, and I will go at once; but that you may not waste
more time in waiting, I will tell you that the man you speak of will not
be here to-day. And,” he added, with an intensity that startled even
himself, “if there is justice in heaven or upon earth, never again shall
he fulfil a lover’s tryst upon a spot that by any other than a demon
would be shunned as a scene of gentle dalliance, if not abhorred as the
theatre of a crime that should have blasted his whole life!”
The girl threw back her head-covering and looked up in uncomprehending
amaze. As her gaze caught Ashley’s both colored, both averted their eyes
in confusion. Ashley recoiled before hers, so childlike, so honest.
“Chata!” he murmured; “Chata!” involuntarily extending toward her his
hand in deprecation, in entreaty, in protection. She clasped it as a
frightened child might, and clinging to it rose to her feet, swaying a
little and bending low, not with weakness, but with shame.
“I dared not disobey him,” she murmured at last. “I dared not disobey.”
Ashley dropped her hand,—almost flung it from him.
The girl’s face crimsoned; she opened her lips, hesitated, then clasping
her hands together, cried, “It is not as you think. Oh, rather than the
truth, would to God it were! I am not the child of Don Rafael and Doña
Rita! Jose Ramirez is my father!”