CHAPTER IV.
A BACKWARD GLANCE.
We will now take up our narrative at the point where we left it at theconclusion of the "Pirates of the Prairies." During the six months whichhad elapsed since the mournful death of Dona Clara, certain events havetaken place, which it is indispensable for the reader to know, in orderproperly to understand the following story.
He will probably remember that White Gazelle was picked up in a faintingcondition by Bloodson, while at the side of the old pirate, Sandoval. Hethrew the girl across his horse's neck, and started at full speed in thedirection of the teocali, which served him as a refuge and fortress. Wewill follow these two important persons, whom we reproach ourselves withhaving too long neglected.
Bloodson's mad course was frightful to look on. In the shadow of thenight the horse bounded forward, trampling beneath its nervous hoofseverything they met, while its outstretched head cleft the air. Its earswere thrown back, and from its widely opened nostrils issued jets ofsteam which traced long white furrows in the gloom. It dashed forward,uttering snorts of pain, and biting between its clenched teeth the_bozal_ which it covered with foam, while its flanks, torn by the spursof its impatient rider, dripped with blood and perspiration. But thefaster it went, the more did Bloodson torment it, and seek to increaseits speed.
The trees and rocks disappeared with marvellous rapidity on either sidethe road, and White Gazelle was presently restored to life by theviolent shocks the movements of the horse gave to her body. Her longhair trailed in the dust, her eyes, raised to Heaven, were bathed intears of despair, grief, and impotence. At the risking of fracturing herskull against the stones, she made useless efforts to escape from thearms of her ravisher, but the latter fixed on her a glance whose passionrevealed a ferocious joy, and did not appear to notice the terror hecaused the girl, or rather seemed to derive from it an unspeakablepleasure. His compressed lips remained silent, only allowing passage atintervals to a shrill whistle intended to increase the ardour of hishorse, which, exasperated by the pressure of its rider, seemed no longerto touch the ground, and devoured the space like the fantastic steed inthe ballad of Lenore.
The girl uttered a cry, but it was lost in the gloomy echoes, drowned inthe sound of this mad chase. And the horse still galloped on. SuddenlyWhite Gazelle collected all her strength, and bounded forward with suchvivacity, that her feet already touched the ground; but Bloodson was onhis guard, and ere she had regained her balance, he stooped down withoutchecking his steed, and seizing the girl by her long tresses, lifted herup, and placed her again before him. A sob burst from the Gazelle'schest, and she fainted once again.
"Ah, you shall not escape me," Bloodson yelled; "no one in the world cantear you from my grasp."
In the meanwhile darkness had been succeeded by day; the sun rose inall its splendour. Myriads of birds saluted the return of light by theirjoyous strains; nature had awakened gaily, and the sky, of a diaphanousazure, promised one of those lovely days, which the blessed climate ofthese countries has alone the privilege of offering.
A fertile landscape, exquisitely diversified, stretched out on eitherside the road, and blended with the distant horizon. The girl's bodyhung down the side of the horse, following unresistingly all themovements imparted to it; with her face covered with a livid paleness,half opened lips, clenched teeth, uncovered bosom and panting chest, shepalpitated under Bloodson's hand, which pressed heavily upon her.
At length, they reached a cavern, where were encamped some fortyIndians, armed for war; these were Bloodson's companions. He made them asign, and a horse was brought to him; it was high time, for the one herode had scarce stopped ere it fell, pouring forth black blood from itsnostrils, mouth, and ears. Bloodson mounted, took the girl before him,and started again.
"To the hacienda Quemada (the burnt farm)," he shouted.
The Indians, who doubtless were only awaiting their chief's arrival,followed his example, and soon the whole band, with the stranger attheir head, galloped along, hidden by the dense cloud of dust theyraised. After five hours' ride, whose speed surpasses all description,the Indians saw the tall steeples of a town standing out in the azure ofthe horizon, beneath a mass of smoke and vapour. Bloodson and his bandhad left the Far West.
The Indians turned slightly to the left, galloping across fields, andtrampling under their horses' hoofs, with wicked fury, the rich cropsthat covered them. At the expiration of about half an hour, they reachedthe base of a lofty hill, which rose solitary in the plain.
"Wait for me here," said Bloodson, as he checked his horse; "whateverhappens, do not stir till my return."
The Indians bowed in obedience, and Bloodson, burying his spurs in hishorse's flanks, started again at full speed. But this ride was not long.When Bloodson had disappeared from his comrades' sight, he stopped hishorse and dismounted. After removing the bridle, to let the animalbrowze freely on the thick and tall grass of the plain, the strangerraised in his arms the girl whom he had laid on the ground, where sheremained senseless, and began slowly scaling the hillside.
It was the hour when the birds salute with their parting strains thesun, whose disc, already beneath the horizon, shed around only obliqueand torpid beams. The shadow was rapidly invading the sky; the wind wasrising with momentarily increasing violence, the heat was oppressive,large blackish clouds, fringed with grey and borne by the breeze, chasedheavily athwart the sky, drawing nearer and nearer to the earth. In aword, all foreboded one of those hurricanes such as are only seen inthese countries, and which make the most intrepid men turn pale withterror.
Bloodson still ascended, bearing the girl in his arms, whose lifelesshead hung over his shoulder. Drops of lukewarm rain, large as dollars,had begun to fall at intervals, and spotted the earth, which immediatelydrank them up; a sharp and penetrating odour exhaled from the ground andimpregnated the atmosphere.
But Bloodson still went up with the same firm step, his head droopingand eyebrows contracted. At length he reached the top of the hill, whenhe stopped and bent a searching glance around. At this moment, adazzling flash shot athwart the sky, illuminating the landscape with abluish tint, and the thunder burst forth furiously.
"Oh!" Bloodson muttered with a sinister accent, and as if answeringaloud an internal thought, "nature is harmonising with the scene aboutto take place here; but the storm of the Heavens is not so terrible asthe one growling in my heart. Come, come! I only needed this fearfulmelody. I am the avenger, and am about to accomplish the demoniacal taskwhich I imposed on myself; during a night of delirium."
After uttering these ill-omened words, he continued his progress,proceeding toward a pile of half-calcined stones, whose black pointsstood out of the tall grass a short distance off. The top of the hillwhere Bloodson was, offered a scene of inexpressible savageness. Throughthe tufts of grass might be noticed ruins blackened by fire, pieces ofwall, and vaults half broken in. Here and there were fruit trees,dahlias, cedars, and a _noria_ or well, whose long pole still bore atone end the remains of the leathern bucket once employed to draw water.
In the centre of the ruins stood a large wooden cross, marking the siteof a tomb; at the foot of this cross were piled up, with ghastlysymmetry, some twenty grinning skulls, to which the rain, wind, and sunhad given the lustre and yellowish tinge of ivory. Round the tomb,snakes and lizards, those guests of sepulchres, silently glided throughthe grass, watching with their round and startled eyes the stranger whodared to disturb their solitude. Not far from the tomb, a species ofshed, made of interlaced reeds, was falling to ruin, but still offered ascanty shelter to travellers surprised by a storm. It was toward thisshed that Bloodson proceeded.
In a few minutes he reached it, and was thus sheltered from the rain,which at this moment fell in torrents. The storm had reached the heightof its fury--the flashes succeeded each other uninterruptedly; thethunder rolled furiously, and the wind violently lashed the trees. Itwas, in a word, one of those awful nights on which deeds without a name,which the sun will not illumin
e with its brilliant beams, areaccomplished.
Bloodson laid the girl on a pile of dry leaves in one of the corners ofthe shed, and after gazing on her attentively for some seconds, hefolded his arms on his chest, frowned, and began walking up and down,muttering unconnected sentences. Each time he passed before the maiden,he stopped, bent on her a glance of undefinable meaning, and resumed hiswalk with a shake of his head.
"Come," he said hoarsely, "I must finish it! What! That girl, so strongand robust, lies there, pale, worn out, half dead. Why is it not RedCedar that I hold thus beneath my heel?--but patience, his turn willcome, and then!"
A sardonic smile played round his lips, and he bent over the girl. Hegently raised her head, and was about to make her smell a bottle he hadtaken from her girdle, when he suddenly let her fall on her bed ofleaves, and rushed away, uttering a cry of terror.
"No," he said, "it is not possible: I am mistaken, it is an illusion, adream."
After a moments' hesitation, he returned to the girl, and bent over heragain. But this time his manner had completely changed: though he hadbeen rough and brutal previously, he was now full of attention to her.During the various events to which White Gazelle had been the victim,some of the diamond buttons which fastened her vest had been torn off,and exposed her bosom. Bloodson had noticed a black velvet scapulary, onwhich two interlaced letters were embroidered in silver, suspended roundher neck by a thin gold chain. It was the sight of this mysteriouscypher which caused Bloodson the violent emotion from which he was nowsuffering.
He seized the scapulary with a hand trembling with impatience, broke thechain, and waited till a flash enabled him to see the cypher a secondtime, and assure himself that he was not deceived. He had not long towait: within a few seconds a dazzling flash illumined the hill. Bloodsonlooked, and was convinced: the cypher was really the one he fancied hehad seen. He fell to the ground, buried his head in his hands, andreflected profoundly. Half an hour passed ere this man emerged from hisstatue-like immobility; when he raised his head, tears were coursingdown his bronzed cheeks.
"Oh! this doubt is frightful!" he exclaimed; "at all risks I will removeit: I must know what I have to hope."
And drawing himself up haughtily to his full height, he walked with afirm and steady step toward the girl, who still lay motionless. Then,as we saw him once before with Shaw, he employed the same method whichhad been so successful with the young man, in order to recall WhiteGazelle to life. But the poor girl had been subjected to such rudetrials during the last two days, that she was quite exhausted. In spiteof Bloodson's eager care, she still retained her terrible corpse-likerigidity: all remedies were powerless. The stranger was in despair atthe unsatisfactory results of his attempts to recall the girl to life.
"Oh!" he exclaimed at each instant, "She cannot be dead: Heaven will notpermit it."
And he began again employing the measures whose futility had been provedto him. All at once he smote his forehead violently.
"I must be mad," he exclaimed.
And searching in his pocket, he drew from it a crystal flask, filledwith a blood-red liquor; he opened with his dagger the girl's teeth, andlet two drops of the fluid fall into her mouth. The effect wasinstantaneous: White Gazelle's features relaxed, a pinky hue covered herface; she faintly opened her eyes, and murmured in a weak voice--
"Good Heaven! Where am I?"
"She is saved!" Bloodson exclaimed with a sigh of joy, as he wiped awaythe perspiration that ran down his forehead. In the meanwhile the stormhad attained its utmost fury; the wind furiously shook the wretchedshed, the rain fell in torrents, and the thunder burst forth with aterrible din.
"A fine night for a recognition!" Bloodson muttered.