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Suddenly, with a slight hiss as of a living snake, an arrow sped unerringly through a tuft of liquid embers, and laid low, after one brief spasm of death, a huge dog which seemed a mongrel of Newfoundlander and a wild wolf.
Shortly afterwards the branches which masked the poor animal's stiffening body (on which the greedy flies began already to settle, and towards which the tumblebugs were scrambling in their amazing instinct), were parted by a trembling hand, and a white man of Spanish-American extraction, showed his face streaming with perspiration and impressed with terror and despair, to which, at the discovery, was immediately added a profound sorrow.
"Snakebit! That is what detained Fracasador (the Breaker into Bits). Come, arouse thee, good dog!" he said in Spanish, but instantly perceiving the tip of the arrow shaft buried almost wholly in the broad chest, he uttered a sigh of deep consternation, and added —
"Again the dart of death! We are still pursued by that remorseless fiend."
Fracasador was certainly dead.
"After our horses, the dog! After the dog, ourselves! Brave Benito! Poor Dolores, my poor child!"
He started, as the bushes rustled, but it was not an enemy who appeared. It was the young woman whom he had named, and a youth in his two-and-twentieth year at the farthest.
Benito was tall, well and stoutly built; his form even stylish, his features fine and regular; his complexion seemed rather pale for a native, from his silky hair, which came down disorderly on his square shoulders, being of a jet black. Intelligence and unconquerable daring shone in his large black eyes. On his visage sat a seldom seen blending of courage, fidelity and frankness. In short, one of those men who win at first sight, and can be trusted to the last.
Though his costume, reduced by the dilapidation of the thorns, consisted of linen trousers caught in at the waist by a red China crape faja or sash, and a coarse "hickory" shirt, he resembled a disguised prince, so much ease and distinction abounded in his bearing. But, for that matter, throughout Spanish-America, it is impossible to distinguish a noble from a common man, for they all express themselves with the same elegance, employ language quite as nicely chosen, and have equally courteous manners.
The girl whom he supported, almost carried in fact, was sleeping without being fully unconscious, as happens to soldiers on a forced march. Dolores was not over sixteen. Her beauty was exceptional, and her modesty made her low melodious voice falter when she spoke. She was graceful and dainty as an Andalusian. The profile so strongly resembled that of the man who was leaning over the slain dog that it did not require the remembrance that he had spoken of her as his child, for one to believe that he had father and daughter under his ken.
"Don't wake her!" said the elder man, with a quick wave of the hand to quell the other's surprise. "Let her not see the poor faithful hound, Benito. And keep yourself, as I do, before her as a shield. The cowardly foe to whom we owe the loss of our horses, our arms, and now our loyal comrade is lurking in the thicket, may even – Oh, Holy Mother, that should protect us from the heathen! – be this instant taking aim at our poor, dear Dolores, with another missile from his accursed quiver."
"The villain!" cried Benito, darting a furious glance around. "Luckily, she sleeps, Don José."
Indeed the elder Mexican could take the girl without awakening her out of the other's arms, and, after a long kiss on her pure forehead, bear her away from the dog's proximity into a covert where he laid her upon the grass with precaution.
"Thank heaven for this sleep," said he, "it will make her temporarily oblivious of her hunger."
Benito had taken the other's zarapé which he spread over the girl. That blanket was their only appendage; beside the scanty covering which the three wore, weapons, water bottle and food container, they had none. A critical position this for the small party, weaponless and foodless in the waste! A disarmed man is reckoned as dead in such a wild! Struggling is impossible against the incalculable foes that either crush a solitary adventurer by their mass, or deputize, so to say, some such executioner as he whom we saw to have slain the dog, and we hear to have rid the three Mexicans of their horses and equipments. The story of how this deprivation came about is short and lamentable.
CHAPTER II.
ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE
Don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente was the son of that General Bustamente, twice president of the Mexican Republic. When his father, cast down from power, was forced to flee with his family to take final refuge at Guayaquil, the boy was only five or six years old. Suffering with fever, which made the voyage dangerous for him, the child was left at Guaymas in charge of a faithful adherent, who found no better way of saving the son of the proscript from persecution than to take him as one of his own little family up the San José Valley, where he had a ranch. The boy remained there and grew up to the age when we encountered him.
His rough but trusty guardian let the youth run wild, teaching him to ride and shoot as the only needful accomplishments. Benito, falling into the company of the remnant of purer-blooded Indians, supposed to be the last of the original possessors of that region, relished their vagabond life exceedingly. Not only did he spend weeks at a time in hunts with them, with an occasional running fight with the Yaqui tribe, and even the Apaches raiding Sonora; but, at the season for pearl diving, accompanied them in their boats, not only in the Gulf, but down the mainland and up the seacoast of the peninsula. La Paz he knew well, and the Isles of Pearls were familiar in every cranny.
Now, when the news of his father's death in exile came to Benito, he was a hunter and horseman doubled by seaman and pearl fisher, such as that quarter of the world even seldom sees.
So little on land, both enemies and followers of the copresident lost all trace of the son.
Moreover, in the land of revolution in permanency, the offspring of a once ruler are personally to blame if they call dangerous attention on themselves.
On shore, however, don Benito had noticed the daughter of a neighbour, one don José Miranda, formerly in the navy. After a couple of years' wedded life, the latter was left a widower with an only daughter, who had become this charming Dolores, now slumbering under her father's zarapé. Her education was confided to a poor sister of the captain, who was about the only enemy young Bustamente had in his courtship. Captain Miranda was very fond of the youth, and it was agreed ere long that there should be a wedding at the Noria de las Pasioneras (Well house of the Passionflowers) as soon as Benito reached the age of five-and-twenty.
But doña Maria Josefa had contrary marital projects. Her brother had so many times talked of bestowing the bulk of his considerable fortune on his beloved child, that the lady concluded, rightly or wrongly, that she would be penniless when the niece married. Habituated, since a great while back, to a very easy, not to say pampered existence at her kinsman's expense, she beheld with terror the time coming when her host would settle all his property on the girl, and constitute the strange young man, who was so reserved about his origin, the steward for his young wife. However, doña Maria Josefa was too sly and adroit to openly oppose the paternal determination, and allow him to perceive the hate she bore Benito and would be only too delighted to manifest.
Whenever she threw out hints of a better match for her niece than this mysterious youth, they had fallen in deaf ears, and she fretted in silence that boded no good prospects.
Nevertheless, some two years had known the young hearts formally engaged without the serpent lifting her head to emit a truly alarming hiss. At that time doña Maria Josefa introduced at her brother's a hook-nosed gentleman, arrayed sumptuously, who rejoiced in a long name which paraded pretensions to an illustrious lineage. This don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortez so displeased Benito and Dolores, whilst not ingratiating himself deeply with don José, that his presence would not have been tolerated, only for the young couple hopefully supposing that the tall and bony scion of the first conqueror of Mexico was a flame of Dolores' duenna, and as such would wed the dragon and take her away from the hacienda to the beautiful and boundless domains in Spain, upon which he expatiated in a shrill voice of enthusiasm.
Don Aníbal