THE VIRGIN FOREST.
Don Torribio Quiroga, with whom we have now to do, was a young man of
twenty-eight, with a refined and intellectual countenance, an elegant
figure, and possessing in the highest degree the manners of the best
society.
He belonged to one of the richest and most considerable families in
the province of Chihuahua: the death of his parents had put him in
possession of an income of more than five hundred thousand piastres, or
about ninety thousand pounds sterling; for money is plentiful in that
country.
A man in this position, and gifted with all the mental and physical
advantages enjoyed by Don Torribio, had a right to very high
pretensions; for, a certain amount of fortune once reached, obstacles
no longer exist, or, at least, are only an excitement instead of an
impediment.
Don Torribio had succeeded in all his undertakings, with one exception:
his struggle against Don Fernando,--a struggle in which the latter had
always come off victorious.
Thus the hatred the rich _hacendero_ felt for the bee-hunter, and which
was originally based upon puerile motives, had insensibly increased
with each successive mortification, and ended at last by assuming the
alarming proportions of real Mexican hate, which only the death of its
object can appease.
After the meeting with Don Fernando Carril, which resulted so
unfavourably for him, Don Torribio Quiroga remained a prey to that cold
and concentrated rage which slowly eats into the soul till it explodes
with terrific violence.
As soon as he lost sight of his lucky adversary, he had started at full
speed. His spurs mangled the flanks of his luckless horse, who snorted
with pain, and redoubled his furious pace.
Now, where was Don Torribio going, with distorted features and hair
streaming to the wind?
He did not know himself; moreover, he did not care.
He saw nothing, heard nothing. Revolving sinister projects in his
brain, he crossed torrents and ravines without checking his horse's
career.
Hatred was crying aloud in his heart; nothing cooled his burning
forehead; his temples beat as if they would burst, and nervous
agitation shook him in every limb.
This state of overexcitement lasted many hours. His steed still
continued to fly. At last the noble animal, worn out with fatigue,
suddenly stopped and dropped upon the sand.
Don Torribio rose, and looked around him with a bewildered air.
A shock like this rude fall was necessary to restore order to his
ideas, and recall him to reality. Another hour of such continued
anguish would have made him raving mad, or ended in sudden apoplexy.
It was night. Thick darkness covered the earth; a mournful silence
reigned over the wilderness to which chance had brought him.
"Where am I?" he exclaimed, endeavouring to make out his position.
But the moon, hidden by clouds, gave forth no ray; the wind began to
roar like thunder; the branches of the trees crashed against each
other, and, from the depths of the wilderness, the growlings of the
wild beast began to mingle their deep notes with the sharper howling of
the wild cats.
Don Torribio strained his eyes in vain efforts to penetrate the
darkness around him. At last he approached his horse, which was
stretched on the ground, and drawing its breath with difficulty. Moved
with pity for the faithful companion of so many adventures, he stooped
down, removed his pistols from the holsters to his belt, and taking
from the saddle, where it was slung, a gourd filled with rum, began
to wash the eyes, nostrils, and mouth of the panting animal. Half an
hour's persistence seemed to restore life to the horse. He got on his
legs, and, with his natural instinct, soon discovered a neighbouring
rill, at which he slaked his thirst.
"All is not yet lost," muttered Don Torribio; "after all, I may make my
escape hence."
But a deep roar resounded at a short distance, repeated immediately
afterwards in four different directions.
The horse's coat stood on end; and Don Torribio felt a cold shudder run
through his veins.
"Curse upon it!" he exclaimed; "I have stumbled upon a drinking place
for panthers! What is to be done?"
He stooped, and found the confirmation of his fears in the footprints
stamped in the muddy borders of the rill.
Just at this moment he saw, at ten paces from him, two eyes, glimmering
like burning coals, fixed upon him with strange intensity.
Don Torribio was a man of well-tried courage. Many a time, before the
eyes of his comrades, he had performed deeds of wonderful temerity; but
now, alone in the darkness, and surrounded by savage animals, he felt
himself overcome by deadly terror: his chest heaved, and his breath
came and went with difficulty through his set teeth; a cold sweat broke
out on his limbs, and he was on the point of dropping.
But this fit of terror did not last above a minute. By a violent effort
of his will, he collected himself, and calling all his energy to his
aid, prepared for a desperate struggle, in which he knew he must
succumb; yet, preserving that instinct of self-preservation and hope
which is seldom utterly extinguished in man, he determined to defend
his life to the last moment.
Just then his horse, with a snort of horrible fear, bounded away, and
made his escape on to the plain.
"So much the better," muttered Don Torribio; "perhaps the poor brute's
speed may save him."
A frightful concert of yells and howling broke out in all parts
of the forest at the flight of the horse, and mighty shadows,
indistinguishable in the darkness, bounded past Don Torribio.
He smiled bitterly.
"Aha!" said he; "Shall I stand here to be devoured, without attempting
to escape? _¡Vive Dios!_ It would be the act of a fool! Come, I am not
eaten yet: I will go."
A violent gust of wind here cleared the heaven of clouds, and for some
minutes the wan light of the moon lit up the wild spot, in which Don
Torribio found himself.
A few paces off, the Rio del Norte ran between two steep banks; on all
sides, and far away in the distance, the dense masses of the virgin
forest extended themselves. A chaos of rocks piled on each other in
inextricable confusion, from whose fissures rose clumps of trees
overgrown with entangled creepers drooping in fantastic garlands,
pushed its ramifications to the verge of the river; the soil, composed
of sand and the detritus always abounding in the forests of America,
crumbled under the footstep.
Then Don Torribio knew where he was: at least fifteen leagues from
the nearest inhabited spot. He was entangled in the first spurs of an
immense forest--the only one throughout the country of the Apaches
which the hardy pioneers of civilization had not yet dared to explore,
such mysterious horrors seemed concealed in its dark recesses.
Don Torribio took no pains to inquire how his headlong course had
brought him to this dreaded region. Danger so frightful that it claimed
the exertion of all his powers, hung too directly over his head for him
to waste time in speculating on anything save the manner of extricating
himself.
At this side, the limpid steam we have mentioned issued from a rock;
its banks, impressed with numberless footprints of wild beasts, clearly
indicating that the spot was a favourite drinking place, when, at
sunset, they left their lairs to seek their food and quench their
thirst. And as a further living proof of the fact, two magnificent
jaguars, male and female, had at that very moment stopped at its
border, and were watching with restless eyes the gambols of their young.
"So," said Don Torribio to himself, "here are pleasant neighbours;" and
he mechanically cast his eyes on the other side.
An immense panther, crouched on a rock in the attitude of a cat on the
watch, had fixed on him two eyeballs glowing like carbuncle.
Don Torribio, according to the custom in South America, never left home
without his weapons. His carbine, of great price, was of remarkable
accuracy, and by a providential chance, had not been broken when he
fell with his horse. He had placed it as he rose against a rock beside
him: he stretched out his arm, and seized it.
"Good!" said he, with a grim smile; "The struggle will cost them dear,
at all events."
He shouldered the weapon; but at the moment he was about to fire, a
plaintive caterwauling causing him to raise his eyes, he saw a dozen of
catamounts and tiger cats of immense size perched in the branches above
him, while a number of wolves crept stealthily up and dropped down in
the bushes behind him. Poised on the summits of the surrounding rocks,
a tribe of vultures, bald buzzards, and _urubus_, with half closed
eyes, seemed to be expecting the moment to seize their share of the
quarry.
With one bound, Don Torribio threw himself on to an angle of the rock,
and from thence, by aid of his hands and knees, he contrived, in the
course of a minute or two, to drag himself with enormous difficulty,
to a kind of terrace, about twenty feet above the ground. Here he felt
himself in comparative security for a time.
The horrible concert performed by the denizens of the forest, attracted
one after another by the keenness of their scent, increased in volume
with every minute, and had now reached such a pitch, that it drowned
the roar of the wind which was raging through the ravines and
clearings.
The moon had disappeared behind the clouds, and Don Torribio was once
more enveloped in darkness. But if he could no longer distinguish the
wild beasts, he knew they were there: he smelt their odour; he saw
their eyes flashing through the obscurity; and their yells, nearing him
more and more, made him feel that the last spark of hope would soon be
extinguished for ever.
Firmly planting his feet on the ground and leaning a little forward
to secure his aim, he drew a revolver, and fired six shots in rapid
succession at the tiger cats. Six howls of agony, and the noise
produced by falling from branch to branch, immediately followed. Six of
the beasts were killed or wounded.
Nothing more horrible can be conceived than the uproar caused by this
unexpected onslaught. The wolves threw themselves yelling on the
victims, which they began to devour eagerly, disputing their booty with
the vultures and _zopilotes_, who also claimed their share.
Suddenly there was a strange rustling amongst the leaves and branches
of the trees. A body, of indistinguishable shape, shot through the air,
and alighted growling on the platform. Don Torribio, clutching his
rifle, dealt the animal a terrific blow with the butt on the skull, and
the brute rolled howling from the top of the rock to the bottom.
And now his ears were stunned by the uproar arising from a dreadful
combat, a few feet below him, between the jaguars and tiger cats on
one side, and the panther which had attacked them. Fascinated by the
terrible danger to which he was exposed, Don Torribio, forgetful of the
evil consequences to him that might ensue, fired two pistol shots into
the mass of foes tearing and rushing at each other's throats at his
feet.
Thereupon a strange thing occurred: all these animals, natural enemies
to each other, seemed to comprehend that it would be better to unite
against man, their common foe, than waste their strength in strife
among themselves. Suddenly ceasing from the terrible combat in which
they were engaged, and abandoning, with one accord, the bloody and
half-devoured bodies of the victims, they turned their rage in the
direction of the rock on which Don Torribio seemed to set them at
defiance, and attacked it in concert with terrific energy--leaping upon
its excrescences, striving to hold on to them, and trying to escalade
it on all sides at once.
The situation grew more and more critical. Several tiger cats had
already bounded on to the platform. As fast as Don Torribio knocked
them over, others took their place. The number of his enemies increased
with every minute; his own strength and energy were gradually deserting
him.
This strife of one man against a host of ferocious brutes had something
grand and striking about it. Don Torribio, like one with the nightmare,
strove in vain to beat back the constantly renewed crowds of his
assailants: he felt close to him the hot and fetid breath of the tiger
cats and panthers; the roaring of the jaguars, and mocking moans of the
panthers, poured into his ears a frightful song, that deafened and made
him giddy; the eyes of thousands of his invisible foes flashed through
the obscurity, and fascinated his own gaze; and sometimes the heavy
wing of the vulture or _zopilote_ brushed his cheek, from which the
cold sweat exuded.
An accurate perception of his own existence had vanished from his soul;
he no longer thought: his life, if we may still use the expression, had
grown mechanical; his motions and gestures were those of a machine, and
his arm rose and fell with the dull regularity of a pendulum.
Talons had already torn his flesh; several catamounts, rushing upon
him, had fastened on his throat, and he had been obliged to seize them
bodily to force them to quit their hold. His blood was streaming from
twenty wounds, superficial, it is true; but the moment was close at
hand when the energy which alone sustained him would be worn out, and
he would fall from the rock, to be torn in pieces by the brutes who
were ever pressing more madly upon him.
At this solemn moment, when strength and courage were alike failing,
a last cry issued from his breast--a cry of agony, a cry of horrible
expression, which was repeated far and wide by the echoes: the last,
the final protest of a bold man, who owns himself vanquished, and
instinctively calls on his kind for succour before he falls.
Wonderful to relate, a cry answered his own!
Don Torribio, astonished, and not daring to believe that a miracle
was to take place in a wilderness where none before himself had dared
to penetrate, fancied his ears had deceived him; yet, confessing to
himself how little strength was still left him, and feeling hope
faintly reviving in his soul, he uttered a second cry, more poignant,
more help-seeking than the former.
As soon as the echoes of the forest were silent after their repetition
of the cry, a single word, weak as a sigh, was borne to his listening
ears on the wings of the breeze: "Hope!"
Don Torribio recovered himself. Electrified by the word, he seemed
to regain new life and strength, and redoubled his strokes on his
numberless assailants.
Suddenly the gallop of many horses was heard in the distance, several
discharges of firearms illumined the darkness with their transient
splendour, and some men, or rather demons, rushed unexpectedly into the
thickest crowd of wild beasts, making a horrible slaughter.
At this moment Don Torribio, attacked by two tiger cats, rolled upon
the platform struggling with both.
In a very short time the brutes were put to flight by the newcomers,
who hastened to light fires to keep them at bay for the rest of the
night.
Two of the men armed with burning torches of ocote wood, set themselves
to search for the man whose cries of distress had brought them to his
aid.
They were not long in finding him stretched out on the platform,
surrounded by ten or twelve dead tiger cats, and clutching in his
stiffened hands the throat of a strangled catamount.
"Well, Carlocho," exclaimed a voice, "have you found him?"
"Yes," replied the other; "but he seems dead."
"_¡Caray!_" resumed Pablito; "It would be a pity; for he was a bold
fellow. Where is he?"
"There; on the rock opposite you."
"Can you let him down with the _verado's_ help?"
"Nothing easier; he is as still as a log."
"Make haste, then, in the name of heaven!" said Pablito; "Every
minute's delay may be a year's life stolen from him!"
Carlocho and the _verado_ lifted Don Torribio by the feet and
shoulders, and with infinite precaution carried him from the improvised
fortress he had defended so bravely to one of the fires, and laid him
on a bed of leaves prepared by El Zapote; for the four _vaqueros_ were,
by a strange chance, reunited in this spot.
"_¡Canarios!_" cried Pablito, at sight of the miserable man; "Poor
devil! How they have mauled him! It was high time for help."
"Do you think he will recover?" asked Carlocho, with great interest.
"There is always hope," said Pablito dogmatically, "when the vital
organs are uninjured. Let us look at him."
He bent over the body of Don Torribio, unsheathed his poniard, and put
the blade to his lips.
"Not a sign of breath!". and he shook his head.
"Are his wounds serious?" asked the _verado_.
"I think not: he has fallen from fatigue and overexcitement."
"But in that case he may come round again?"
"Perhaps he may; perhaps he may not: all depends upon the greater or
less violence of the shock to his nervous system."
"Ha!" exclaimed the _verado_ joyfully; "Look here! He breathes. _¡Vive
Dios!_ He has tried to open his eyes!"
"Then he is saved!" replied Pablito; "He will soon come to his senses.
This man has a constitution of iron. He will be able to be in the
saddle in a quarter of an hour, if he likes; but we must attend to his
wounds."
The _vaqueros_, like the backwoodsmen, live far from inhabited places;
and are obliged to be their own doctors; hence they acquire a certain
practical knowledge of surgery, and are adepts in the collection and
application of the herbs in use among the Indians.
Pablito, aided by Carlocho and the _verado_, bathed the wounds of Don
Torribio, first with water, then with rum, and blew tobacco smoke into
his nostrils.
The latter, after some minutes of this strange treatment, uttered a
scarcely perceptible sigh, moved his lips slightly, and at last opened
his eyes, which as yet had no consciousness in them.
"He is saved!" repeated Pablito; "Now let us leave nature to work: she
is the best doctor I know."
Don Torribio raised himself up, supporting himself on one elbow, and
passed his hand across his forehead, as if to recall his thoughts.
"Who are you?" he said in a feeble tone.
"Friends, señor; fear nothing."
"I am killed; my limbs are all broken."
"It is nothing to signify, señor; it is only fatigue: you are as well
as we are?"
Don Torribio sat up and looked attentively at the men who surrounded
him.
"I must be mistaken," said he; "I never expected to find you here. By
what miracle did you reach me in time to save me?--you, whom I promised
to meet at a rendezvous so far from the spot where we are?"
"It was your horse performed the miracle, señor," said the _verado_.
"How is that?" asked Don Torribio, whose voice grew stronger every
moment, and who had already managed to stand up.
"The case is very simple. We were skirting the forest, on our road
to the place you had pointed out to us, when suddenly a horse passed
across us at a giddy speed, a pack of wolves at his heels. We soon
relieved him from his incarnate foes. Then, as we thought it unlikely
for a saddled horse to be all alone in a forest into which none dare
venture, we set out in search of his rider. Your cry was our pilot."
"Thanks!" replied Don Torribio; "I shall know how to repay the debt I
have contracted with you."
"Nonsense! That is not worth speaking of. Come! here is your horse; we
can go as soon as you like."
Don Torribio held up his hand.
"Stay here," said he; "we shall find no more suitable place than this
to discuss what we have got to say to each other."