Part 13

The extraordinary contrast of the most magnificent vegetation, then just bursting out in all the green and blooming freshness of the season, with the severe grandeur of the most sublime Alpine scenery, fettered the young man for some moments in speechless admiration. He was roused from his reverie by a slight rustling behind him, and turning his head quickly, he gave a spring which, if less perilous than many of those he had recently made, was yet at least as useful in extricating him from a dangerous position.

"_Picaro!_" shouted one of the Zambos, whose machete had harmlessly stabbed the air, instead of piercing, as was intended, Don Manuel's heart.

"_Maldito Gachupin!_" cried the other, who had swung his club with a like innocuous result.

The attack of the two bravoes was made so suddenly and unexpectedly, that Manuel had barely time to jump aside. With wonderful coolness and presence of mind he sprang to the shelter of the rock, at the same moment throwing his hands forward so suddenly that one of the Zambos, in his hurry to escape, nearly ran over his companion. A brace of pistols, which the young man had drawn from the breast of his jacket, were the cause of this sudden change in the tactics of the bandits, who now retired hastily into the thicket. Don Manuel gazed after them for a few moments, and then again approached the edge of the barranca, from the top of which the mules were now no longer very distant. Not a word had escaped him during the short scuffle, and to judge from the cool indifference he had manifested, the occurrence was one of neither a rare nor extraordinary nature.

The nephew of the Conde de San Jago had not long relapsed into contemplation when he was again disturbed by a loud _halto!_ proceeding from the same thicket from which it had been already shouted to the Zambos, and the next instant the patriot captain issued forth with levelled carbine. No ways discomposed, the young don raised a pistol.

"Down with your gun, or I fire!" cried he.

"Indeed," said the captain, "you should be a bold cock, to judge from your crow."

"You will soon find out what I am," replied the young man dryly.

"_C--jo!_" quoth the captain, and removed the carbine from his shoulder.

The appearance of the patriot or rebel officer, whichever he may be styled, although less bandit-like than that of the two Zambos, was not calculated to inspire much confidence. His face was shadowed, indeed concealed, by a thick mass of black hair, which hung down over forehead, cheeks, and neck, and allowed scarcely any part of his countenance to be visible, except a pair of coal-black eyes of somewhat oblique expression. Although not of a particularly strong build, his frame was muscular, and apparently inured to hardship. He wore a round, high-crowned, Guadalajara hat, encircled by a gold band, in which was stuck a large miniature of the Virgin of Guadalupe. A second portrait of that venerated patroness was hung round his neck by a blue and white riband. His cloak, of fine cloth, and laced with gold, had been much worn and ill-treated, as had also his hose and his red velvet jerkin; on his feet he wore shoes, through which his toes had forced themselves a passage, and instead of the usual gamashes, his legs were bound round with sheepskin. Spurs, full six inches long, and with rowels of the same diameter, were affixed to his heels. His arms consisted of a carbine, a machete, and a rusty dragoon sabre.

The young Creole measured this personage with an indifferent glance, and a smile of disdain for a moment played round his mouth; but then, as if he did not deem the object worthy of further notice, he let his pistol fall carelessly by his side, and turned his back negligently upon the new comer.

"_Todos diabolos!_" exclaimed the captain after a moment's pause, and apparently indignant at the contempt with which he was treated. "Whence come you, and whither are you going? What is the object of your journey? Answer me, young sir, and that quickly. _Soy un gran capitan! Llevo las manos y tiembla la tierra!_"

"Probably one of the leaders of the self-styled patriot army," said the young Creole, in a tone of scorn, in reply to this pompous announcement.

"Even so, señor," returned the other, suddenly changing his own manner of speaking to a sort of humorous sneer--"commander of a division of the patriot army, presently in headquarters at Puebla."

"Headquarters!" repeated Manuel with infinite disdain. "Your authority extends far and wide, it would appear," added he, with a glance at his interlocutor's dilapidated shoes.

"It does so," answered the other, in the same humorous but somewhat malicious tone. "Nevertheless, my wardrobe, as your excellency doubtless perceives, has somewhat suffered in the service of the rebel cause, and as your señoria will probably have an earlier opportunity than I shall of providing yourself with another pair of shoes and gamashes, I would crave of you to condescend so far as to seat yourself upon that stone and divest yourself of those you now wear, for the behoof and advantage of the unworthy capitan before you, who will otherwise be compelled to dispossess your worship of them in a less amicable manner."

The _gran capitan_ waited a few moments after making this demand, but then observing that the young Creole took no steps towards obeying his orders, he stamped impatiently upon the ground, and exclaimed in a stern peremptory tone,

"Off with them, and quickly! Your shoes and your gamashes!"

"You will find my shoes too tight for you, I expect," replied Don Manuel, raising a pistol. The Metis, on his side, covered the young nobleman with his carbine.

"Keep still, Jago," cried Don Manuel sharply, "or I will so shoe you that you shall remember Manuel M----to the very last day of your life."

The patriot officer pushed aside the hair which hung over his forehead and eyes, gazed at the Creole for a few seconds in great astonishment, and then, letting his gun fall, ran towards him with outstretched arms.

"_Santa Virgen!_" exclaimed he--"By the blessed Redeemer of Atolnico! May I never see heaven if it is not the very noble señor Don Manuel, nephew of his excellency Count San Jago, the first cavalier in Mexico, and son of the not-quite-so-noble but still very-tolerably-noble Señor Don Sebastian, and of the Gachupina, Señora Donna Anna de Villagio, and _cortejo_ of the greatest angel in Mexico, and consequently in the whole world, the Countess Elvira!"

This characteristic and thoroughly Mexican apostrophe was accompanied by vehement gesticulation on the part of the Metis, in whose expressive and variable countenance a strange mixture of fun and irony, with reverence for the illustrious persons he was speaking of, was discernible. He was interrupted in his tirade by Don Manuel.

"Have you done?" said the latter.

"Not yet," replied the captain. "May the Virgin of Guadalupe for ever deprive me of those comforts to Mexican palates, Havannah cigars and aguardiente, if I can guess what so noble a señor as yourself is doing on such a rugged path as the old Camino de Cortes, instead of taking the usual road by Otumba."

"I can tell you the reason," replied Don Manuel. "Our friends have commissioned me to have you hung, and that as soon as possible."

"Indeed!" said the captain with a sly smile; "and would you be good enough, just for the joke's sake, to tell me the names of those friends? I might, perhaps, find an opportunity of returning their kindness."

As he spoke he advanced a step towards the Creole, in a sort of familiar way.

"Keep your distance!" cried the young man. "None of your hypocritical caresses! We know each other."

"Hardly, señor," replied Jago, shaking his head. "If you knew me you would, perhaps, speak in another tone. But truly, now, should I not have been a very simple Jago to have passed my life as driver of your mules, or perhaps of the _gente irracionale_, as you call the poor devils of Indians? Ah! your worshipful uncle is a right noble and powerful caballero, speaks little but thinks much, and does more, and has his hand over all Mexico and the _madre patria_, and perhaps a step further; but believe me he would speak to Jago in a very different manner from that adopted by his nephew, the son of the tolerably-noble señor Don Sebastian. The count is a very noble gentleman; but when he made over one of his finest estates to your father, he committed a blunder that cost him three hundred able-bodied Indians. Ha ha!" continued the man, raising his sombrero from his head and setting it on again, a little on one side; "you cannot forgive poor Jago for having walked off with the three hundred Indians, who suddenly took a fancy to leave the peaceable hacienda of Don Sebastian, and follow the great Hidalgo, after the example of your very humble servant. But only think now; for three hundred lean oxen, which your worshipful father was kind enough to give to a like number of those poor devils, they had to toil a whole year; and, by the blessed Virgin, St Christopher did not sweat more when he carried the infant Jesus through the flood! It happened to those poor Indians just as it did to St Christopher. The longer they toiled the heavier grew the load; and as they had not the thews and sinews of the saint, they at last sank under the burthen. So far from being able to pay for the oxen, they got every year deeper into your tolerably-noble father's debt. Can you wonder, then, that they threw aside spades and baskets, and joined the army of Hidalgo?"

However galling the patriot captain's observations were to the young nobleman, the latter could not help being struck by their justice.

"Do you think we are dogs, señor?" continued Jago. "You are a _blanco_, a white, not one of our rulers certainly, but of as pure blood as any of then. _You_ have never felt the _infamia de derecho_[36] weighing upon you, following you like your shadow, and worse, for _that_ at least leaves one during the rains; and yet _my_ father was as good a father as any Spaniard's could be, and my mother as good a mother. But what was the use of that? Jago is a Metis. He is infamous, and his children's children after him."

The man had touched briefly, but acutely, upon the wrongs of the two classes composing the great majority of the Mexican population, and his words seemed not to have been without their effect upon the young Creole, who replied in a less harsh tone than he had hitherto employed--

"If Mexico is to be delivered by you, and such as you, then is she lost indeed."

Jago caught at the word.

"Delivered!" he repeated sarcastically. "In spite, then, of your aristocratic blood, you feel that a deliverance is wanted? Yet the world says, that for six months past you have become a worse Gachupin than the Spaniards themselves."

Don Manuel cast a furious glance at the Metis.

"Aha! that stings!" continued the latter. "What! have they played you a trick too? But _misericordià_ with your nobility, who quailed before the rising sun of freedom, and deserted your own country to aid the tyrants who oppress it. When such was the case, the time was come for the people to assert their rights; and assert them they did, as you know."

"And a fine reward they got for so doing," retorted the youth.

"Our day will come yet," returned the captain. "You are _caballeros_, very gentle and noble men, and we are only _gavilla_, knaves and serfs--therefore have ye hung and shot us, struck us down like oxen, and trampled us under foot, used us worse than snared wolves. Poor Hidalgo!" continued he in a more gentle tone, "you little thought, twelve months before, how you would be peppered by the damnable Gachupins. They rubbed his hands and his poor bald head with brick-dust, slipped a _san benito_ over him, and sent him straight into paradise, where, doubtless, he is now giving concerts, with his musicians and the blessed St Cecilia. Allende ought to be there, too; but he is a soldier, and perhaps they would not let him in amongst the eleven thousand virgins. But enough of this. May we venture humbly to enquire of Don Manuel, what brought him upon this lonely _marques-camino_? Has your young excellency, perchance, a fancy to take up arms for Mexico and freedom's sake?"

"By the Holy Virgin, Jago, you are an impudent scoundrel, and deserve a beating, for daring to suspect a caballero of such base dispositions."

The Metis smiled scornfully.

"You have chosen the other side, señor," said he, "instead of remaining neutral, which would have been best for you. Ah! beams from bright eyes! Aha!"

"Scoundrel!" cried the youth with menacing tone and gesture, "if your tongue"----

"Speaks," interrupted Jago, "what every guachinango[37] in Mexico sings over his pulque. But love blinds, they say. May I beg to know what you are doing on this road?"

"Mind your own business," replied the angry nobleman, turning his back haughtily upon his interrogator, who gazed at him for a moment with a look of comical astonishment.

"Now, by my poor soul!" exclaimed the captain, "that is an amount of pride which, if divided into a million of doses, would stock every Creole in Mexico with the drug! But listen to me, young sir. All things have their time, says the proverb, and some two years back this behaviour might have been very suitable from your worship towards Jago the arriero; but times are changed since a certain cura, named Hidalgo, hoisted the standard of Mexican liberty. Ah! your nobility, always excepting the very noble Conde San Jago, display their courage in tertulias and ballrooms, in intrigues and camarilla conspiracies; but when it came to hard knocks they crept out of the way, and left the poor priest of Dolores to help himself. Hidalgo did not understand such tricks, and began in right earnest. You should have seen Hidalgo--you would never have thought him the man he was. A short, round, little fellow, with a sanguine smile and lively eyes, and a complexion as olive-green as the Madeira bottles he was so fond of. His head was bald; he used to say his bedstead was too short, and had rubbed all his hair off; but in spite of that, and of his threescore years, he had the sinews of a caguar and the strength of a giant; always on horseback, and a splendid rider, for he had been a lancer in the _presidios_, and had had many a fight with those devils of Comanches. Ah, Hidalgo! you deserved a better fate!" concluded the patriot captain in a saddened tone.

The young Creole had listened with some interest to this short but graphic sketch of the remarkable man who first, with unexampled boldness, raised the banner of Mexican liberty, and who, as well through the originality of his private life, as through his political virtues and failings, had become an object of idolatry to his friends, and of unappeasable hatred to his opponents. Just as Jago finished speaking, Don Manuel's servants and muleteers made their appearance upon the platform.

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.

"I long To hear the story of your life, which must Take the ear strangely."

_The Tempest._

"Welcome, Alonzo, and Pedro, and Cosmo, in the quarters of freedom!" cried Jago to the servants, as, with outstretched hand, he advanced a few steps to meet them. "A welcome to ye all!"

"_Maldito herege!_" cried Alonzo, bringing his carbine to his shoulder. "Dog! do you dare"----

The other servants joyfully took the proffered hand. The arrieros bowed before the man who had so lately been one of themselves, with marks of deep reverence, which were only stopped by a significant sign from their _cidevant_ comrade.

"Always the same man, Alonzo," said the captain with a contemptuous laugh; "just fit to say '_beso las manos a su señoria_,' and to cringe and bow before counts and marquises. But it is ill speaking with dogs of that kind," added he, as he again turned to the young nobleman. "Yes, señor," he continued, "Hidalgo was a true man. He it was who first put me out of conceit with slavery of all kinds. 'Tis just sixteen months and three weeks to-morrow, since the shell burst. Hidalgo was keeping the tertulia with his musicians--it was nine in the evening. In came Don Ignacio Allende y Unzaga, as white as ashes; he had ridden for dear life from Valladolid, where Iturriaga, in order to secure his place in heaven, had consigned his sworn brothers to destruction, by confessing every thing to Father Gil, who in his turn had confessed to the Audiencia. The corregidor of Valladolid had been immediately arrested as one of the heads of the conspiracy, and luckily this had reached the ears of Allende and Aldama, who hastened to horse, and came as fast as spur and whip could bring them, to take counsel of the only man who could help them in their extremity. And counsel he gave them. He and the captain deliberated for one hour, and then out he came, brisk and bold, and declared himself ready for the fight. Off he started to the prison, put a pistol to the jailer's head, and compelled him to give up the keys and set loose the prisoners. Allende went to the houses of the Gachupins and took away their money, giving them acknowledgments for it. All this was done without blood being spilled. Only one Gachupin, who behaved roughly to Hidalgo, had been slightly wounded. The Indians, Metises, and Zambos, rallied round their cura, and away they all went to Miguel el Grande and Zelaya, where an infantry regiment and four squadrons of cavalry joined them. On to Guanaxato, where another battalion came over. _Todos diabolos!_" continued Jago, "Hidalgo had now more than fifty thousand men at his back; but what were they? Three thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry among a legion of Indians. The soldiers were lost amid the brown multitude, like flies in a pail of pulque. The fifty thousand Indians were shoeless and half-naked, armed with clubs and slings, or at most with machetes, which might do well enough to cut up _tasajo_,[38] but were a deal too short to be measured with Spanish bayonets. Capital fellows were they for plundering and murdering, but ill fitted for a fight. In Miguel el Grande, in San Felipe, in Zelaya, the Gachupins had been cut off to a man. That would not have mattered much, but the _gente irracionale_ had included the Creoles with the Spaniards. In Guanaxato, it was still worse. I joined Hidalgo just in time for that dance. We were received with open arms by the Léperos and Indians, but the Creoles and Gachupins had shut themselves up in the Alhondega. This was the first resistance our mad mob had met with, and they rushed like raging savages to attack the granary. They were right well received, and a desperate fight began. At last a giant of a _tenatero_ found an enormous flat stone, put it on his head as he might have done his sombrero, and held it on with his right hand, while with a lighted torch in his left, he set fire to the door of the Alhondega. A way was soon opened to the assailants, who rushed in over the smouldering fragments of the door. In a few minutes fourteen hundred Spaniards and Creoles, with wives and children, were stabbed, struck down, and torn in pieces. The Indians waded in blood and treasure. The latter they brought out by baskets full; and the fools might be seen changing doubloons for copper money, taking them for half-dollar bits.

"About four thousand Indians had joined us out of the city, and thirty thousand out of the district, of Guanaxato. Hidalgo was at the summit of his glory. A council of war had named him generalissimo; Allende was his second in command; Ballesa, Ximenes, and Aldama, lieutenant-generals; Abasala, Ocon, and the brothers Martinez were brigadiers. Hidalgo sang a _Te Deum_, and divided the army into regiments, each of a thousand men, and gave regular pay; to the officers three dollars a-day, the cavalry one dollar, and the rest half a dollar. He himself appeared in field-marshal's uniform, blue with white facings, the medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe upon his breast. It would have been wiser, however, to have named him archbishop, and made Allende general-in-chief. Hidalgo was a capital priest, but a thorough bad general, and could not even maintain discipline in his army. In his first anger at the Creoles for keeping aloof from the revolution, he had included them in the cry of '_Mueran los Gachupinos!_' and now his eighty thousand Indians had taken their cue from him, and murdered, and ravaged, and burned, wherever they came, like incarnate devils. In this manner, the Creoles had been rendered our inveterate enemies--more the pity. My late mother used always, when she went on a pilgrimage to Guadalupe, to burn two tapers, a white and a black one--the first for the blessed Virgin, the second for the devil. 'There is no knowing,' she used to say, 'what one may come to.'"

The interesting nature of Jago's narrative, and his originality of manner, had by this time riveted the attention of Don Manuel and his attendants.

"When we left Guanaxato," continued the ex-muleteer, "we were more than eighty thousand men, but only three thousand four hundred of us were armed. The _gente irracionale_, in their mad rage, had destroyed even the muskets of the Gachupins. Our numbers, however, still kept increasing, and Hidalgo continued his march in triumph. On the 27th October we were in Tolucca. On the 28th we met Truxillo at Las Cruces, and scattered him and his fifteen hundred men to the winds of heaven. Two days later we were in sight of Mexico."

The captain paused. His delivery during the latter part of the narrative had been hurried and broken; he was evidently much excited by the recapitulation of the stirring scenes in which he had mingled. With visible effort he resumed--

"Ah, Mexico, _estrella del mundo_! Well might thy beauty and brilliancy dazzle the judgment of the poor cura. Hidalgo seemed to lose his head. Instead of marching at once upon the city, he sent General Ximenes with a summons to it to surrender. Ximenes, the greatest poltroon that ever disgraced an epaulet, came back with the most exaggerated stories of the formidable preparations that were making to receive us. This disconcerted Hidalgo; and on the top of that out came a whole regiment of priests and shavelings, sent by the Viceroy, and they talked to Hidalgo about hell-fire and such like, till he swore it would be the most frightful sacrilege to deliver up Mexico, the seat of our holy religion and of all piety, to the _gente irracionale_. Moreover, we learned that Callija had beaten Sanchez at Queretaro, and effected a junction with Cadena. Holy Virgin!" groaned Jago. "Hidalgo acted like a madman. Instead of taking possession of Mexico with his hundred and ten thousand Indians and four thousand troops of the line, which he might have done without opposition, he ordered a retreat, after we had been a whole day staring at the city like gaping idiots. Vanegas was already on the start for Vera Cruz with his two thousand men. Allende, all of us, begged, prayed, entreated; but it was of no use--retreat we did, and at Aculco ran right into the jaws of Calleja and Cadena.

"I was in Allende's division," continued Jago. "That chief sent General Ximenes with a despatch to Hidalgo, and I was ordered to attend him. His excellency, Hidalgo that is to say, was stationed on the hill of Aculco, surrounded by his staff; and close beside him were the fourteen cannons that composed our whole artillery. It was on the 7th of November. We were scarcely fifty paces from Allende and his aide-de-camps, when Ximenes turned to me and handed me the despatch, which was written on an agave leaf.

"'Go,' said he, 'and deliver this to General Hidalgo.'

"I stared at him in astonishment.

"'But, General'----said I.

"'But me no buts. I served ten years in his majesty's troops and never used the word. Away with you.'