LITMIR.BIZ

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sunbeams were beginning to gild with lustrous tints: then, after breathing a suppressed sigh, he pushed the hurdle, covered with a cowhide, which served as door to the rancho, and disappeared in the interior.

      The rancho externally had the wretched appearance of a hut almost falling into ruins; still, the interior was more comfortably arranged than might have been reasonably expected in a country where the exigencies of life, with the lower classes more especially, are reduced to what is most strictly necessary.

      The first room – for the rancho contained several – served as parlour and sitting room, and communicated with a lean-to outside, used as a kitchen. The whitewashed walls of this room were adorned, not with pictures, but with six or eight of those coloured engravings, manufactured at Epinal, and with which that town inundates the world. They represented different episodes in the wars of the empires, and were decently framed and glazed. In a corner, about six feet from the ground, a statuette, representing Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, was placed on a mahogany console, edged with points, on which were fixed yellow wax tapers, three of which were lighted. Six equipales, four butacas, a sideboard covered with various household articles, and a large table placed in the middle of the room, completed the furniture of this apartment, which was lighted by two windows with red curtains. The floor was covered with a mat, of rather delicate workmanship.

      We have omitted mention of an article of furniture very important through its rarity, and which was most unexpected in such a place: it was a Black Forest cuckoo clock, surmounted by some bird or other, which announced the hours and half-hours by singing.

      This cuckoo was opposite the entrance door, and placed exactly between the two windows.

      A door opened on the right into the inner room.

      At the moment when the stranger entered the rancho, the room was empty.

      He leant his gun in a corner, took off his hat, which he laid on a table, opened a window, up to which he drew a butaca, then rolled a husk cigarette, which he lit and smoked as calmly and coolly as if he were at home, though not till he had cast a glance at the clock, and muttered, —

      "Half past five! Good! I have time: he will not arrive before."

      While speaking thus to himself, the stranger threw himself back in the butaca; his eyes closed, his hand loosed its hold of the cigarette, and a few minutes later he was sleeping soundly.

      His sleep had lasted about half an hour, when a door behind him was cautiously opened, and a pretty woman, three-and-twenty at the most, with blue eyes and light hair, came into the room stealthily, curiously stretching out her head, and fixing a kind, almost affectionate, glance on the sleeper.

      The young woman's face evidenced gaiety and maliciousness, blended with extreme kindness. Her features, though not regular, formed a coquettish and graceful whole which pleased at the first glance. Her excessively white complexion distinguished her from the other rancheros' wives, who are generally copper-coloured Indians: her dress was that belonging to her class, but remarkably neat, and worn with a coquettishness that admirably became her.

      She thus came up softly to the sleeper, with her head thrown back, and a finger laid on her lip, doubtless to recommend two persons who followed her – a middle-aged man and woman – to make as little noise as possible.

      The woman appeared to be about fifty years of age, the man sixty; their rather ordinary features had nothing striking about them, excepting a certain expression of energetic decision spread over them.

      The woman wore the garb of Mexican rancheros; as for the man, he was a vaquero.

      All three, on coming close to the stranger, stopped before him, and watched him sleeping.

      At this moment a sunbeam entered through the open window, and fell on the stranger's face.

      "Vive Dieu!" the latter exclaimed in French, as he sprang up suddenly and opened his eyes; "Why, deuce take me, I really believe I was asleep!"

      "Parbleu! Mr. Oliver," the ranchero replied, in the same language; "what harm is there in that?"

      "Ah! There you are, my good friends," he said, with a pleasant smile, as he offered them his hand; "it is a joyous waking for me, since I find you at my side. Good day! Louise, my girl. Good day! Mother Therese; and good day to you, too, my old Loïck! You have cheerful faces, which it is a pleasure to look at!"

      "How sorry I am that you woke up, Mr. Oliver," the charming Louise said.

      "The more so, because you were doubtless fatigued," Loïck said.

      "Stuff! I have forgotten it. You did not expect to find me here, eh?"

      "Pardon me, Mr. Oliver," Therese replied; "Lopez informed us of your arrival."

      "That confounded Lopez cannot hold his tongue," Oliver said, gaily; "he must always be chattering."

      "You will breakfast with us, I hope?" the young woman asked.

      "Is that a thing to ask, girl?" the vaquero said; "I should like to see Mr. Oliver decline, that is all."

      "Come, rough, one," Oliver said, laughingly; "do not growl. I will breakfast."

      "Ah! That is all right," the young woman exclaimed. And, aided by Therese, who was her mother, as Loïck was her father, she instantly began making preparations for the morning meal.

      "But, you know," said Oliver, "nothing Mexican – I do not expect the frightful cooking of the country here."

      "All right!" Louise answered, with a smile; "We will have a French breakfast."

      "Bravo! The news doubles my appetite."

      While the two women went backwards and forwards from the kitchen to the dining room, preparing the breakfast, and laying the table, the two men remained near the window, and were conversing together.

      "Are you still satisfied?" Oliver asked his host.

      "Perfectly," the other answered. "Don Andrés de la Cruz is a good master; besides, as you know, I have but few dealings with him."

      "That is true. You only depend on No Leo Carral."

      "I do not complain of him. He is a worthy man, although a majordomo. We get on famously together."

      "All the better. I should have been grieved had it been otherwise. However, it was on my recommendation that you consented to take this rancho; and if there were anything – "

      "I would not hesitate to inform you of it, Mr. Oliver; but in that quarter all goes well."

      The adventurer looked at him fixedly.

      "Then something is going wrong elsewhere?" he remarked.

      "I do not say so, sir," the vaquero stammered, with embarrassment.

      Oliver shook his head.

      "Do you remember, Loïck," he said to him, sternly, "the conditions I imposed on you, when I granted you your pardon?"

      "Oh! I do not forget them, sir."

      "You have not spoken?"

      "No."

      "Then Dominique still believes himself?"

      "Yes, still," he replied hanging his head; "but he does not love me."

      "What makes you suppose so?"

      "I am only too certain of it, sir: ever since you took him on the prairies, his character has completely changed. The ten years he spent away from me have rendered him completely indifferent."

      "Perhaps it is a foreboding," the adventurer remarked in a hollow voice.

      "Oh, do not say that, sir," the other exclaimed with horror, "musing is a bad counsellor: I was very guilty, but if you knew how deeply I have repented of my crime – "

      "I know it and that is the reason why I pardoned you. Justice will be done, some day, on the real culprit."

      "Oh, sir, and I tremble, wretch that I am, at having been mixed up in this sinister history, whose denouement will be terrible."

      "Yes," the adventurer said with concentrated energy, – "very terrible indeed! And you will

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