With the same unreasoning fury with which he had denounced Ramirez at
the banquet, Ruiz had returned to the camp of Gonzales; and through a
cleverly managed correspondence with Ramirez—in which however he dared
not mention the name of Chinita, lest he should awaken in the astute
mind of the General a suspicion that his godson conjectured the
deception which was to be played upon him—Ruiz gradually drew from the
chief data through which to propose such movements to Gonzales as
procured for him as a strategist the respect and admiration of that
commander, which well might have satisfied a laudable ambition.
Meanwhile Ramirez himself, though surrounded by no despicable force,
which was daily augmented by accessions from the mountains or from the
ranks of less popular leaders of either party, was for the first time in
his life oppressed by a vague melancholy,—which, with some impatience,
he ascribed to the forced separation from the child whose purity and
innocence had so irresistibly attracted him. There were times when he
thought with what horror such a record as his would be viewed by that
gentle and upright nature; and a positive dread came upon him of her
ever knowing the one incident that had been so vividly recalled to him
by the appearance of the avenger upon the grave of the man he had
murdered years before,—one crime among many he had almost forgotten. He
said to himself that an evil spell had been upon him ever since the day
when he had foolishly thrown away the charm the elf-like child had given
him. His emissaries had brought him word time and again of the
miscarriage of his best-laid plans. Who had betrayed them?
Ramirez knew too well who had frustrated them. The American who had
escaped his knife at the cemetery seemed ubiquitous since obtaining the
commission which authorized him to wage war against his cousin’s
murderer. Not content with defending El Toro with unexampled bravery, he
appeared at every point where an advantage was to be gained. “_Carrhi!_”
Ramirez said to himself, “I shall be forced to give that fellow a thrust
of my dagger in secret, since he appears to be impervious to ball and
proof against the chances of open warfare. He or I must fall. There’s
not room in all Mexico for him and me.”
Whether there was room or not, it seemed destined that they should
remain in it together, though not without constant collision. Gonzales
became to the mind of Ramirez far less formidable than this
yellow-haired foreigner, who with a mere handful of followers so
constantly harassed and baffled him. Like most men of his class, the
mountain chieftain was intensely superstitious, and one night in the
moonlight he saw, or fancied he saw, a female form glide before him into
the chaparral. He caught but a glimpse of the face, but it had reminded
him of Herlinda, for whom he had done the deed that, so late, seemed to
have brought upon him a threatened retribution. As he searched the
bushes for the woman, whom he could not discover, he shuddered as he
remembered the expression of her eyes,—as of a wronged creature who had
loved and now hated. He had seen such an expression in a woman’s eyes
before. More than ever after this strange occurrence the thought of
Ashley Ward tormented him; the young man’s face haunted him; and
curiously enough other faces also began to peer upon him,—faces of women
he had wronged, of men who with good cause bore him deadly hatred, or of
others whom, like the American, or the gatekeeper, he had murdered.
Ramirez grew strangely taciturn and nervous. Not even the letters of
Ruiz aroused him. In his heart he distrusted his godson, as he did all
men but Reyes, all women but Chata. Had she been near, he thought, he
would have talked to her and cast off his fancies; but in her absence
they grew upon him. One day he could have sworn he saw clearly not only
the face but the figure of Pedro Gomez; and upon another, that of the
woman he had loved long years before. Bah! they were fantasies. He
wondered whether he too would be seized with the fever, which was still
raging at Tres Hermanos, and of which they said its lady was dying at
her daughter’s house in Guanapila. Was this weakness of nerve the
presage of what was to come?
At last battle was joined with Gonzales as had been planned. The day
turned in favor of Ramirez; even the gallant assistance of Ward availed
little against the desperate courage of the mountain troops. The genius
and valor of their leader were manifested with a vigor that declared
they had been but shaken, not broken. Until the arrival of Ward it had
even appeared that the forces actually under the command of Ramirez
would have been sufficient to effect a victory; but Ward’s appearance
speedily turned the tide in favor of Gonzales, and with some impatience
Ramirez gave the signal that was to hasten the promised action of Ruiz.
But at the critical moment the expected ally failed him. With a
vindictive fury which was demoniacal in its exhibition, Ruiz threw
himself against his old commander. The carnage was terrible in that part
of the field; and when the fray was ended, the demoralization of
Ramirez’s troops was complete,—yet he himself had escaped.
That such should be the case seemed to Ashley Ward incredible, as later
he walked over the field seeking among the slain the man against whom he
had begun a private warfare, which to his own surprise had, with further
investigation of the principles involved, rapidly attained in his mind
the dignity of a struggle for liberty that even dwarfed the incentive of
personal revenge, although it was impossible that this should be wholly
forgotten or ignored.
Gonzales marched into El Toro amid the clanging of bells and shouts of
rejoicing; for though that was a convent town, the people of the lower
class were mad _Juaristas_, who did good service under Ward when troops
were scarce. The triumph had however not been gained without much loss
upon the Liberal side; and among the missing was the young officer who
in the eyes of Gonzales—and to the astonishment of Ward—had so ably
vindicated his character as a stanch adherent in the day of battle. Pepé
too, the right-hand man of Ward, was gone.
In very truth, at the last moment the most important and useful
calculation of Ruiz had failed. He saw Ramirez, by his orders,
surrounded by desperate men; it seemed inevitable that he must be
stricken down,—when a party led by Reyes broke through to his
assistance, and in the fury of the onslaught Ruiz himself was swept from
his horse and hurried away, and to his consternation found himself a
prisoner dragged onward in the irresistible impetus of flight.
They were miles distant from the scene of battle when the fugitives at
last paused; and here for the first time Ramirez knew of the special
prisoner that had been made. When his eyes fell upon the youth, a frown
which darkened as with a palpable cloud his already rigid and pitiless
face, overspread the countenance of Ramirez and made it absolutely
terrible. Even to fallen angels the crime of ingratitude may seem the
one damnable offence. In Ruiz, remembering the love and favor he had
shown him, Ramirez held it so to be. This insignificant boy had
compassed his ruin; his life seemed too poor a forfeit to condone the
offence. The baffled, desperate, outraged chieftain cursed the fate
which had cast the treacherous favorite into his power. But the terrible
blackness of his face still deepened, as he gazed.
A lasso had been drawn tightly around the waist of Ruiz. His face was
cut and bleeding; the gold lace and epaulettes had been torn from his
coat; his uncovered hair was filled with dust, and his face reeking with
sweat. He raised his bloodshot eyes appealingly. He knew the man before
him,—the man, worthless and unscrupulous though he was, who had been
kind to him, whom he had betrayed, and whose death he had attempted to
compass. Ruiz did not attempt to speak, but fell on his knees and raised
his bound hands. Ramirez gazed at him a moment in silence, then without
the quiver of a muscle in his impassive face uttered the sentence, “Let
him be shot at once!”
Shot at _once_,—from that terrible mandate there was no appeal. There
was not one there to utter a word in the traitor’s behalf, but only a
moan from the dust to which he had sunk. Reyes was not there; probably
the result would have been the same had he been. The soldiers raised the
young officer and stood him against a tree.
At the last moment that strange indifference to death, which among his
countrymen so often counterfeits courage, caused Ruiz to straighten his
figure and raise his head; and in the insolence of despair he said to
Ramirez, with a glance of malignant contempt, “Had you fallen into my
hands I would have shot you with my own pistol an hour ago.”
Perhaps the still proud youth hoped by this speech to escape the
ignominy of execution by a file of common soldiers. If so he was
mistaken. Ramirez gave the signal; the balls whizzed through the air and
found their way to their destined aim. Ruiz fell without a groan.
Ramirez himself, though still with an impassive face, to the
astonishment of all stooped and stretched the limbs and crossed the
hands of the young man upon his breast. There was a spot of blood upon
the face, and the chief wiped it away as tenderly as a mother might lave
the face of her dead infant; and yet but a few moments before he had
commanded this youth to a violent death, and according to the creed he
held, his soul to purgatory without benefit of clergy.
Forgetting to give the expected order for the execution of the other
prisoners, Ramirez turned away. In another moment he had placed himself
at the head of the party and continued the retreat. “At the next halt it
can be done as well,” remarked the lieutenant, philosophically. “There
are plenty of horses; bind the prisoners well and bring them along.”
And thus for that day at least Pepé Ortiz among others knew he had
escaped a fate of which the very idea—with the remembrance of Ruiz to
intensify its horror—made his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth and
his knees quiver with terror. Yet the day came when he, like the traitor
whose end he had witnessed, straightened himself against a tree, and
with apparent coolness awaited the mandate of Ramirez that was to
consign him to eternity; naught but a miracle it seemed could save him.
He only begged a cigarette of a soldier, remarking that they might be
scarce where he was going,—secretly hoping thus to hide the quiver of
the lips which belied the bravado of his words.
Shortly after this time, Chata to her surprise received by the hand of
an Indian fruitseller a brief note from Ramirez. At the first reading
its contents seemed hard and indifferent. He spoke with an almost savage
irony of those who were driving him back like a wolf to his mountain
lairs. “I know of fastnesses, if I care to seek them, where no foot but
mine has ever trod, and where this accursed American who is hunting me
down like fate could never hope to follow me,” he wrote. “But it shall
never be said that Ramirez fled from man or spirit, were it Satan
himself. After all, a man may not escape from him who is destined to
bring death to him. Ruiz was marked to die by me. I loved him, yet his
fate is accomplished.”
Chata shuddered. It seemed incredible that save by accident such a thing
could happen, so sacred is esteemed by Mexicans the tie between sponsor
and godchild; and the tone of the letter impressed her as that of a
desperate man who was ready for unheard-of deeds. Had Ramirez in truth
deliberately destroyed the man whom for years he had associated in his
every hope and plan, to whom he had promised the hand of his child? Deep
indeed must have been the villany that had merited such an end. The sigh
of relief which Chata involuntarily breathed, that she was free from the
possible accomplishment of the destiny that had been marked out for her,
was perhaps as sympathetic as any caused by the death of Fernando Ruiz.
A reperusal of the letter gave to Chata’s mind an impression of the
longing, the stinging regret, the remorse which the words had been
designed to conceal rather than display. The pride, the fierceness, the
unconquerable will of the writer pervaded them; yet the wail of a lost
spirit crying for the one good that it had known, and now believed
forfeited forever, seemed to echo through her soul. “He loves me,” she
thought remorsefully. “He believes himself doomed to die, and that he
will see me no more. Oh! if it were possible I would go to him. Oh, if I
dared tell Doña Isabel!—but no, she would keep me from him; she would
mock my pain with the cry that this was but the just recompense of the
evil he had brought upon her long ago. She believes her brother dead;
why torture her by telling her my miserable history?”
Chata showed the letter to Doña Carmen, and she it was who called the
girl’s attention to some chance mention of the name of the place where
Ramirez said he might be able to remain some days, even if closely
pressed, for the people there were secretly sworn to his support. Day
after day wild rumors flew through the city of the pursuit of Ramirez,
his capture, his death, only to be contradicted upon the next. They did
not seriously agitate Chata, for not once was the name of the place he
called his stronghold mentioned.
One night the anxious girl had a vivid dream. She dreamed she saw the
chieftain and Chinita lying dead,—the one on one side of a village
street, the other on the opposite. The people were rushing wildly about
screaming and gesticulating madly, while Doña Isabel, followed by women
clothed in black like herself, was in frenzy passing from one to the
other, uttering that low wail that seems the very key-note of woe.
Chata woke with a stifled scream. The wind was blowing shrilly through
the trees and seemed to bring to her a voice, which said, “Wake! oh
wake, Chata! I have dreamed of her.” The voice sounded close to her ear.
It came from Doña Isabel, who leaning over the dreamer’s bed was
repeating again and again the words, “I shall find her. I have dreamed
of her.”
Chata raised herself upon the pillows and caught the lady’s wasted hand.
“Yes, yes,” continued Doña Isabel, “I have dreamed of Chinita and of
another,—one I loved long years ago. I saw them together in Las Parras.
It is a revelation! Why have I not thought of it before? No other place
would be so fitting. I shall find her. I am going now, now! My carriage,
my horses, my men must be here; I will call them. Tell my daughter when
she wakes; she will understand.”
Doña Isabel turned to leave the room, her excitement supplementing her
returning strength; but Chata detained her. “I too will go,” she cried.
“Nothing shall prevent me. Doña Carmen will not stop us,—she knows; she
dare not forbid me. I will tell her now. She will know what is best for
us. The carriage is still here, but—”
Chata hastened from the room and wakened Doña Carmen. “Ah,” said the
daughter to herself, “the thought is come, and the hour.” She hastily
wrote a line to her husband, who was absent at a hacienda he owned near
the city; provided herself with some rolls of gold, and presently
entered her mother’s room dressed in a somewhat soiled cotton gown, and
with her reboso over her arm. Doña Isabel, who in the excitement of her
thoughts was walking hither and thither, taking up and putting down
articles of apparel, looked at her daughter blankly. Why, she thought,
had a servant come at that hour?
“See, I am ready,” cried Carmen, cheerfully. “The diligence is to leave
the city for the first time to-day. We shall pass through the country
quite safely. Who would stop such poor creatures as we appear to be?”
Doña Isabel looked at her daughter gratefully,—her mind had been running
helplessly upon carriages and mounted escorts and all the paraphernalia
of travel, which require so much time and thought to prepare. “True,
true!” she said, “that will be best, oh much the best!” In feverish
haste she prepared herself for the journey as Carmen had done, arraying
herself in a plain dark dress and reboso. But her daughter noticed that
she did not think of the expenses of the journey, and herself silently
assumed the direction of the little party.
Doña Carmen led the way from her own house so quietly that only the
doorkeeper to whom she gave a few directions, which he doubtless in his
amazement straightway forgot, was awakened. The three ladies were so
humbly dressed that they attracted but little notice at the diligence
house, and being hastily motioned to the poorest seats in the coach were
soon on their way. Covering their faces with their rebosos, they did not
so much as speak to one another.
Some ten leagues from the city the diligence was stopped by a half-dozen
armed men. The male passengers were ordered to lie down upon their
faces, and were despoiled of all their money and valuables. Chata to her
extreme disgust—which fortunately was disguised by her alarm—received an
amicable expression of approval from one of the bandits, which was
abruptly checked by the remark of the captain that this was no time for
fooling, as there was a rival band but a half-mile farther on. The elder
women escaped remark. Happily, the other band did not present itself,
and the three ladies told their beads in devout thankfulness.
That night the travellers remained at a miserable hut, which served as
an inn, feeling a certain protection in the presence of an aged priest,
who chanced to be awaiting there an opportunity to proceed upon a
long-interrupted journey; and upon the following morning he formed one
of the travelling party. Beyond bestowing upon them his blessing, he
said nothing to them,—although somewhat to her discomfort Doña Carmen
noticed that he often turned an inquiring gaze upon them. Early in the
afternoon the diligence stopped at a miserable village, the nearest
point at which, in the interrupted arrangements of travel, it approached
Las Parras; and having deposited Doña Isabel’s party and the priest,
diverged toward the north.
Doña Isabel looked around her helplessly, saying, “It is nearly eight
leagues to Las Parras. I have often been here,—I know the road well. We
shall never reach there!”
“You will see, Mother, you will see,” answered Doña Carmen, cheerfully;
and greatly to the astonishment of the priest and the women who stood
near, she drew forth a half-dozen ounces of gold, and held them up.
“See,” she said in her clear patrician voice, “you are good people here;
we are not afraid to trust you,”—her quick eye had shown her there was
not an able-bodied man in the almost ruinous place. “We are not so poor
as we look, and I will give you all this for three, four—” she glanced
at the priest—“horses, donkeys, or mules, be they ever so poor, upon
which we can go our way.”
The women laughed stupidly, and looked at one another and then at the
gold. Evidently if there was a beast of burden in the village it was
securely hidden, and though the money tempted them they were afraid.
“No, no,” said one at length. “Three weeks ago the Señores Liberales
drove off our last cow, and the week after the Señores Conservadores
slaughtered the turkeys, and—”
“But we want neither cows nor turkeys,” interrupted Carmen, impatiently.
“Quite true; but the Señorita would have horses,” answered the matron
imperturbably; “and yesterday the General Ramirez was here—”
She paused as though it were unnecessary to say more of the fate of
their horses; and Doña Isabel, starting up impetuously, hurriedly
questioned the assembled gossips. Upon the subject of the visit of
Ramirez the villagers were eloquent. He and his followers had reached
there spent with fatigue and long fasting. In a few moments the place
had been sacked of all its poor provision; there had not been enough to
give one poor ration to the half-dozen prisoners who were with them.
They would have been shot—yes, upon the very spot upon which their
graces were standing—but for the prayers of a young girl, who seemed to
be the lieutenant’s wife; at least she was in his care,—and Ramirez had
admitted it could be done as well at the next halt. She herself gave a
drink of water to the poor lads for the love of God, and also a tortilla
to one among them that she knew,—poor Pepé Ortiz; but he was too weak to
swallow it, and had given it to another less wretched than he.
Chata began to cry softly, while Doña Isabel demanded a description of
the young girl who had been of the party. This was vague enough; but
insufficient as it was it made the thought of further delay
impossible,—and the eloquence and gold of Doña Carmen, to which was
added the authority of the priest, presently induced the villagers to
produce four sorry beasts, upon which with some difficulty the party
were secured, for no saddles or panniers were to be had. It was almost
sunset when, following the old stage-road, the already wearied
travellers set out upon their long and possibly perilous ride.
The women of the village stood for a long time with arms akimbo, looking
after the departing travellers. They had divided the money among
themselves,—they felt rich and could afford to be pitiful. “The poor
Señora has perhaps lost a daughter,” said one—“doubtless the fair girl
who rode with the lieutenant. The Holy Mother protect her, for the man
was in two minds about taking her farther; but the Señor General swore
he would run his sabre through him if he cast her off to starve in such
a hole. To starve, eh! One who has never lived in my birthplace cannot
know how well the pigs fatten here when the tunas are ripe.”
“Pshaw! girls are fools, and not worth breaking one’s head for,” said a
second, whose only son kept her rich, when well-laden travellers were
plenty. “Where go they now? They are turning toward Las Parras. They
will miss the soldiers, or I am no prophet.”
“As a prophet one may give thee a thousand lashes, for thou art ever at
fault,” laughed a third. “But what matters it to us where they go? The
road is open to them as to another. They should not go far wrong with a
holy little priest to guide them.”