SERPENT AND VIPER.
Doña Rosario stood motionless, her arms crossed, her head haughtily
raised, and her look disdainful. The Linda leaped from her horse, and
seizing her by the arm, shook her violently.
"Oh, oh!" she said, in a bitterly mocking tone, "my pretty dear! This
is the way you oblige people to come after you: is it?"
Doña Rosario only replied to this flood of words by a look of cold
contempt.
"Ah!" the exasperated courtesan exclaimed, clutching her arm, "I will
bring down that proud spirit!"
"Madam," Rosario replied, mildly, "you hurt me very much."
"Serpent!" the Linda shrieked, "why can I not crush you beneath my
heel?"
Rosario staggered a few paces; her foot struck against a root, and she
fell. In her fall her forehead came in contact with a sharp stone; she
uttered a feeble cry of pain, and fainted. The Indian chief, at the
sight of the large gash in the young girl's forehead, uttered a roar
like that of a wild beast. He leant over her raised her tenderly, and
endeavoured to stop the bleeding.
"Fie!" said the Linda, with a jeering laugh; "are you going to play the
old woman--you, the first chief of your nation?"
Antinahuel remained silent; for an instant he felt an inclination to
stab the fury: he darted a glance at her so loaded with anger and
hatred, that she was terrified, and instinctively made a movement as if
to put herself on the defensive. As yet the attentions of Antinahuel
had no effect; Rosario remained still senseless. In a few minutes
the Linda was reassured by observing that love occupied more of the
thoughts of the chief than hatred.
"Come, tie the creature upon a horse," she said.
"This woman belongs to me," Antinahuel replied, "and I alone have the
right of disposing of her."
"Not yet, chief; a fair exchange: when you have delivered the general,
I will give her up to you."
"My sister forgets," said Antinahuel, "that I have fifty mosotones with
me."
"What does that signify?" she replied.
"It signifies," he replied, "that I am the stronger."
"Indeed!" she said, sneeringly, "is that the way you keep your
promises?"
"I love this woman," he said, in a deep voice.
"_Caray!_ I know that well enough," she replied.
"I will not have her suffer."
"See there, now," she cried, still jeering; "I give her up to you
expressly that she may suffer."
"If such is my sisters thought, she is mistaken."
"Chief, my friend, you do not know what you are talking about; you are
ignorant of the hearts of white women."
"I do not understand my sister."
"No; you do not comprehend that this woman will never love you--that
she will never entertain for you anything but contempt and disdain."
"Oh!" Antinahuel replied, "I am too great a chief to be thus despised
by a woman."
"You will see you are, though; in the meantime I demand my prisoner."
"My sister shall not have her."
"Then try to take her from me!" she shrieked; and springing like a
tiger cat, she pushed away the chief, and seized the young girl, to
whose throat she applied her dagger so closely that blood stained the
point.
Antinahuel uttered a terrible cry.
"Stop!" he shouted in consternation; "I consent to everything."
"Ah!" cried the Linda, with a smile of triumph, "I knew I should have
the last word."
The chief bit his fingers with powerless rage but he was too well
acquainted with this woman to continue a struggle which he knew must
infallibly terminate in the maiden's death. By a prodigy of self
command he forced his face to assume a smile, and said in a mild voice--
"Wah! my sister is excited! Of what consequence is it to me whether
this woman is mine now or in a few hours hence?"
"Yes, but only when General Bustamente is no longer in the hands of his
enemies, Chief."
"Be it so!" he said, "since my sister requires it; let her act as she
thinks fit."
"Very well; but my brother must prove his faith to me."
"What security can I give my sister, that will thoroughly satisfy her?"
he said with a bitter smile.
"This," she replied, with a sneer; "let my brother swear by the bones
of his ancestors that he will not oppose anything it shall please me to
do, till the general is free."
The chief hesitated; the oath the Linda requested him to take was one
held sacred by the Indians, and they dreaded breaking it in the highest
degree; such is their respect for the ashes of their fathers. But
Antinahuel had fallen into a snare, from which it was impossible for
him to extricate himself.
"Good!" he said, smiling; "let my sister be satisfied. I swear upon
the bones of my father that I will not oppose her in anything she may
please to do."
"Thank you," the Linda answered; "my brother is a great warrior."
Antinahuel had no other plausible pretext for remaining: he slowly,
and, as if regretfully, rejoined his mosotones, got into his saddle,
and set off, darting at the Linda a last glance, that would have
congealed her with fear if she had seen it.
"Poor puling creature!" she said. "Don Tadeo, it is you I wound in
torturing your leman! Shall I at length force you to restore to me my
daughter?"
The Indian peons attached to her service had remained with her. In the
heat of the pursuit the horses, abandoned by Curumilla and brought back
by the scouts, had remained with the troop.
"Bring hither one of those horses!" she commanded.
The courtesan had the poor girl placed across one of the horses, with
her face towards the sky; then she ordered that the feet and hands of
her victim should be brought under the belly of the animal and solidly
fastened with cords by the ankles and wrists.
"The woman is not firm upon her legs," she said, with a dry, nervous
laugh.
The poor girl gave scarcely any signs of life; her countenance had
an earthy, cadaverous hue, and the blood flowed copiously. Her body,
horribly cramped by the frightful posture in which she was tied, had
nervous starts, and dreadfully hurt her wrists and ankles, into which
the cords began to enter. A hollow rattle escaped from her oppressed
chest.