Part 15
The usual visits of ceremony had passed between the contracting families; the Señor Fernandez had declared himself satisfied with the generous provisions which had been made for the young couple; the house was set in order, and an early day named for the wedding. Some days of purest happiness followed the tearful anxiety with which Dolores had awaited the negotiations that were to shape her destiny. An earnest of the future came to her in the present of jewels, with which Leon presaged the marriage gifts which he went to the city of Mexico to choose,—for whether rich or poor, no Mexican bridegroom would fail of a necklet of pearls, or a brooch and earrings of brilliants for his bride; and with his luxurious tastes, it was not to be supposed that Leon Vallé could fail to add to these laces and silks and velvets, fit rather for a princess than for the future wife of a country youth whose only capital was in house and land. Isabel had just heard of these things, and had begun to excuse in her heart these extravagances, which seemed so natural to a youth in love, when a remembrance flashed upon her mind which justified the apprehensions she had felt, and which it seemed incredible should have escaped not only her own but also Don Gregorio’s vigilance,—Leon had gone to Mexico in the days of the feast of San Augustin.
Isabel was too jealous of her brother’s good name, too eager to shield him from a breath of distrust, to mention the fears that assailed her. She called herself irrational, faithless, unjust, yet she could not rid herself of the dread which seemed to brood above her like a cloud. And so passed the month of June, and July brought Leon Vallé back again, and one glance at his haggard face and bloodshot eyes revealed to Isabel that her fears were realized. He told the tale in a few words and with a hollow laugh.
“You will have to go to Garcia for me now, Isabel,” he said. “Your last venture has brought me the old luck, cursed bad luck. A plague upon your money! I thought to double or treble it, and the last cent is gone!”
“And the hacienda of San Lazaro?” queried Isabel, faintly.
“Would you believe it? Gone too! Aranda has had the devil’s own luck. ’T was the last of the feast, Isabel. Thousands were changing hands at every table. It seemed a cowardice not to try a stake for a fortune that might be had for the asking. I was a fool, and hesitated till it was too late. Had I only ventured at once! What think you happened to Leoncio Alvarez? He played his hacienda against Esparto’s, and lost. He had dared me not five minutes before to the venture. The devil, what a chance I missed! His hacienda was three times the size of San Lazaro! He bore its loss like a man. ‘What can one do, friend?’ he cried to Esparto; ‘it has been thy luck to-day, ’t will be mine when we next meet.’ Just then his brother Antonio came up. ‘What luck, Leoncio?’ he said. ‘Cursed!’ he answered. ‘I have played my hacienda against Esparto’s here, and lost it.’ Antonio shrugged his shoulders and turned away. ‘Play mine and get it back,’ he suggested, and walked off to the next table. The cards were dealt, and in three minutes Leoncio’s hacienda was his own again, thrown like a ball from one hand to the other. It was glorious play!”
“But this has nothing to do with thee,” ventured Isabel.
“No,” muttered Leon, moodily; “when _I_ ventured my hacienda and lost, there was no Antonio to bid me play his and get it back.”
He looked at Isabel with an air of reproach. She had neither look nor word of reproach for him, yet she felt that a mortal blow had been dealt her. And Leon? He had laughed, though she knew that the laugh was that of the mocking fiend Despair which possessed him; and he had bade her go on his behalf to Garcia. She left him in desperation. She knew how utterly fruitless such an appeal would be.
It was fruitless. Don Gregorio asked with some scorn in his voice whether Leon thought him as weak as she had been, or as much of a madman as himself when he had dared the chances of the tables at San Augustin. For him, Garcia, to furnish money to the oft-tried scapegrace would be a folly that would merit the inevitable loss it would bring. All of which, though true enough, Don Gregorio repeated with unnecessary vehemence to Leon himself, with the tone of irrepressible satisfaction with which he at last saw humiliated the man who had for so long held such a resistless fascination over his wife.
With wonderful self-restraint Leon replied not a word to the cutting irony with which his brother-in-law referred to the mad ambition and folly which had led to his losses, and with which Gregorio excused himself from further assisting in the ruin of the Garcia family,—reminding the gamester that though he had thrown away the key to fortune which he had taken from his sister’s hand, he had still youth, a sword, and a subtle mind, any one of which should be able to provide him a living.
“That is true,” replied Leon, with a dangerous light in his half-closed eyes. “Thanks for the reminder, my brother. What is the old saying? ‘A hungry man discovers more than a thousand wise men.’”
They both laughed. It was not likely that Leon’s poverty would ever reach the point of actual want. There at the hacienda was his home when he cared for it; but as for money,—why as Don Gregorio had said, the key to fortune was thrown away, and it seemed unlikely the unfortunate loser would ever recover it.
Almost on the same day on which Leon Vallé had told his sister of his fatal hardihood at the feast of San Augustin, there arrived, with assurances of the profound respect of Señor Fernandez and his daughter, the jewels and other rich gifts which Dolores had accepted as the betrothed of Leon. With deep indignation that his explanations and protestations had been rejected, but with a pride which prevented the frantic remonstrances which rushed to his lips from passing beyond them, Leon received these proofs of his dismissal, which in a few days was rendered final by the news that the beautiful Dolores had married a wealthier and perhaps even more ardent suitor, whom the insolence and mockery of Fate had provided in the person of the lucky winner of San Lazaro. Even Don Gregorio felt his heart burn with the natural chagrin of family pride, and Isabel would have turned with some sympathy toward the brother of whom, unconsciously to herself, she could no longer make a hero. Strangely enough, his aspect as a suppliant for her husband’s bounty had disrobed him of the glamour through which she had always beheld him. When she herself was powerless to minister to him, he was no longer a prince claiming tribute, but the undignified dependent whom she blushed to see lounging in sullen idleness in her husband’s house. Yet as has been said, when word of the marriage of Dolores Fernandez reached them, they would have given him sympathy; but he had received the news first, and collecting a half-dozen followers had mounted and ridden madly away.
The horses they rode were Don Gregorio’s yet Leon had gone without a word of excuse or farewell. Isabel had no opportunity to tell him that she had no more money to give him; and in her distress at supposing him penniless it was an immense relief to her to find that he had retained in his possession the jewels that the father of Dolores had returned to him. He would at least not be without resource. But soon a strange tale reached her. The jewels torn from their settings, the stones in fragments, the whole crushed into an utterly worthless mass, so far as human strength and ingenuity could accomplish it, had been found upon the pillow of the bride. The husband was jealously frantic that her sanctuary had been invaded; the bride was hysterically alarmed, yet flattered at this proof of her lover’s passion; and the entire community were for days on the _qui vive_ for further developments in this drama of love.
But none came, and soon Leon Vallé’s name was heard of as one of the guerillas of the Texan war, where he fought for—it was not to be said under—Santa Anna; and ere many months his name rang from one end of the republic to the other,—the synonym of gallant daring, which in a less exciting time might have been called ferocious bloodthirstiness.
Isabel quailed as she heard the wild tales told of him; but Don Gregorio shrugged his shoulders and said, “Thank Heaven he turned soldier rather than brigand!” The chief difference between the two in those days was in name; but that meant much in sentiment.
XXI.
Leon Vallé had not parted from his sister in declared hostility, yet months passed before she heard directly from him. But this was not to be wondered at, as letters were necessarily sent by private carriers, and it was not to be expected that in the adventurous excitement of his life he should pause to send a mere salutation over leagues of desolate country.
Meanwhile the prevailing anarchy of the time crept closer and closer to the hacienda limits. Bandits gathered in the mountains and ravaged the outlying villages, driving off flocks of sheep or herds of cattle, lassoing the finest horses, and mocking the futile efforts of the country people to guard their property. The name of one Juan Planillos became a terror in every household; yet one by one the younger men stole away to strengthen the number of his followers and share the wild excitement of the bandit life, rather than to wait patiently at home to be drafted into the ranks of some political chieftain whose career raised little enthusiasm, and whose political creed was as obscure as his origin. “The memory is confused,” says an historian, “by the plans and _pronunciamientos_ of that time. Men changed ideas at each step, and defended to-day what they had attacked yesterday. Parties triumphed and fell at every turn.” The form of government was as changeable as a kaleidoscope, and only the brigand and guerilla seemed immutable. Whatever the politics of the day, their motto was plunder and rapine; and their deeds, so brilliant, so unforeseeable, offered an irresistible attraction to the restless spirits of that revolutionary epoch.
Though Doña Isabel Garcia, like all others, was imbued with the military ardor of the time, the brilliant reputation that her brother was winning in distant fields, though in harmony with her own political opinions, horrified rather than dazzled her. She shuddered as she heard his name mentioned in the same breath with that of the remorseless Valdez, or the crafty and bloody Planillos; yet she was glad to believe his incentive was patriotism rather than plunder, and when at last a messenger from him reached her with the same old cry for “Money! money! money!” she responded with a heaping handful of gold,—all she had been able to accumulate in the few months of his absence. Don Gregorio however, vexed by recent losses and harassed by constant raids from the mountain brigands, sent a refusal that was worded almost like a curse; and ashamed of her brother, annoyed by and yet sympathizing with her husband, Doña Isabel felt her heart sink like lead in her bosom, and for the first time her superb health showed signs of yielding to the severe mental strain to which she had been so long subjected.
June had come again; the rainy season would soon begin, and Don Gregorio, suddenly thinking that the change would benefit his wife, suggested that they should pass some months in the city. The roads were threatened by highwaymen, yet Isabel was glad to go, and even to incur the novelty of danger. Her travelling carriage was luxurious, and with her little girls immediately under her own eye, with an occasional glimpse of the four-year-old Norberto riding proudly at his father’s side in the midst of the numerous escort of picked men, she felt an exhilaration both of body and mind to which she had long been a stranger.
The travelling was necessarily slow, for the roads were excessively rough, and the party had at sunset of the first day scarcely left the limits of the hacienda and entered the defile which led to the deeper cañons of the mountains, wherein upon the morrow they anticipated the necessity of exercising a double vigilance. Not a creature had been seen for hours; the mountains with their straggling clumps of cacti and blackened, stunted palms seemed absolutely bereft of animal life, except when occasionally a lizard glided swiftly over a rock, or a snake rustled through the dry and crackling herbage. Caution seemed absurd in such a place where there was scarce a cleft for concealment, yet the party drew nearer together, and the men looked to their arms as the cliffs became closer on either side and so precipitous that it seemed as though a goat could scarcely have scaled them.
They had passed nearly the entire length of this cañon, and the nervous tension that had held the whole party silent and upon the alert was gradually yielding to the glimpse of more open country which lay beyond, and on which they had planned to camp for the night, when suddenly the whole country seemed alive with men. They blocked the way, backward and forward; they hung from the cliffs; they bounded from rock to rock, on foot and on horse, the horses as agile as the men. Amid the tumult one man seemed ubiquitous. All eyes followed him, yet not one caught sight of his face; the striped jorongo thrown over shoulders and face formed an impenetrable disguise, such as the noted guerilla chief of the mountains was wont to wear. Suddenly there was a cry of “Planillos! Planillos!” amid the confusion of angry voices, of curses, and the clanking of sabres and echo of pistol-shots. Don Gregorio found himself driven against the rocks, a sword-point at his throat, a pistol pressed to his temple, his own smoking weapon in his hand.
Immediately the shouts ceased, and before the smoke which had filled the gorge had cleared, the travellers found themselves alone, with two or three dead men obstructing the road. Don Gregorio had barely time to notice them, or the blank faces of his men staring bewildered at one another, when a cry from Doña Isabel recalled him to his senses, and he saw her rushing wildly from group to group. In an instant he was at her side. “Norberto! where is Norberto?” both demanded wildly, and some of the men who had caught the name began to force their horses up the almost inaccessible cliffs, and to gallop up or down the cañon in a confused pursuit of the vanished enemy.
Don Gregorio alone retained his presence of mind; though night was closing in and the horses were wearied by a day’s travel, not a moment was lost in dispatching couriers to the city for armed police and to the hacienda for fresh men and horses, and the return to Tres Hermanos was immediately begun. Sometime during the morning hours they were met by a party from the hacienda, and putting himself at the head of his retainers Don Gregorio led them in search of his son, while Doña Isabel in a state bordering upon distraction proceeded to her desolated home.
Her first act was to send a courier to her brother. No one knew the mountains as he did, and in her terrible plight she was certain he would not fail her. But her haste was needless, for information reached him from some other source, and within a few days he was at the head of a party of valiant Garcias, who had hastened from far and near to the rescue of their young kinsman.
In all the country round the abduction of Norberto Garcia was called “the abduction by enchanters,”—so sudden had been the attack, so complete the disappearance of the victim. Beyond the immediate scene no trace remained of the act,—it seemed that the very earth must have opened to swallow the perpetrators; and yet day by day proofs of their existence were found in letters left upon the very saddle crossed by the father, or upon the pillow wet with the tears of the mother, demanding ransom which each day became more exorbitant, accompanied by threats more and more ingenious and horrible.
Such seizures, though rare, were by no means unprecedented, and such threats had been proved to be only too likely to be fulfilled. As days went by the agony of the parents became unbearable, and Don Gregorio’s early resolution to spend a fortune in the pursuit and punishment of the robbers rather than comply with their demands, and thus lend encouragement to similar outrages, began to yield before the imminent danger to the life of his son; and to Doña Isabel it seemed a cruel mockery that her brother and the young Garcias should urge him to further exertion and postponement of the inevitable moment when he must accede to the imperious demands of the outlaws.
The family were one evening discussing again the momentous and constantly agitated question, when Doña Feliz appeared among them with starting eyes and pallid cheeks, bidding Don Gregorio go to his wife, from whose nerveless hand she had wrested a paper, which Leon seized and opened as the excited woman held it toward him. Don Gregorio turned back at his brother-in-law’s exclamation, and beheld upon his outstretched hand a lock of soft brown hair, evidently that of a child. It had been severed from the head by a bloody knife. It was a mute threat, yet they understood it but too well. Every man there sprang to his feet with a groan or an oath. Such a threat they remembered had been sent to the parents the very day before the infant Ranulfo Ortega had been found dead not a hundred yards from his father’s door. Did this mean also that the last demand for ransom had been made, and the patience of Norberto’s abductors was exhausted?
Don Gregorio clasped his hands over his eyes, and reeled against the wall. Leon sprang to his feet, pale to his lips, his eyes blazing. Julian Garcia picked up the hair which had fallen from Leon’s hand; the others stood grouped in horrified expectancy. Doña Feliz stood for a moment looking at them with lofty courage and determination upon her face.
“What,” she cried, “is this a time for hesitation? The money must be paid, the child’s life saved. Vengeance can wait!” She spoke with a fire that thrilled them, and though they spoke but of the ransom, it was the word “vengeance” that rang in their ears, and steeled Don Gregorio to the terrible task that awaited him.
That night the quaint hiding-places of the vast hacienda were ransacked, and many a hoard of coin was extracted from the deep corners of the walls, and the depths of half-ruinous wells. Doña Isabel saw treasures of whose existence she had never heard before, but had perhaps vaguely suspected; for through the long years of anarchy the Garcias had become expert in secreting such surplus wealth as they desired to keep within reach. Large as was the sum brought to light, it barely sufficed to meet the demands of the robbers; yet it was a question how such a weight of coin was to be conveyed by one person to the spot indicated for the payment of the ransom and delivery of the child,—for it had been urgently insisted upon that but one man should go into the very stronghold of the bandits.
At daybreak, having refused the offer of Leon Vallé to go in his stead, Don Gregorio mounted his horse and set out on his mission. He knew well the place appointed, for he had been in his youth an adventurous mountaineer, and more than once had penetrated the deep gorge into which, late in the afternoon, he descended, bearing with him the gold and silver. As he entered the “Zahuan del Infierno” he shuddered. Not ten days before he had passed through it, followed by a dozen trusty followers, in search of his child, and had discovered no trace of him; now he was alone, weighted with treasure, sufficient sensibly to retard his movements and render him a rich prize for the outlaws he had gone to meet. Once he fancied he heard a step behind him; doubtless he was shadowed by those who would take his life without a moment’s hesitation. Yet he pressed on, obliged to leave his horse and proceed on foot, for at times the cliffs were so close together that a man could barely force his way between them.
Just as the last rays of daylight pierced the gloomy abyss, at a sudden turn in the narrowest part of the gorge Don Gregorio saw standing two armed men, placed in such a position that the head of one overtopped that of the other, while the features of both were shadowed though made the more forbidding by heavy black beards, which it occurred to him later were probably false and worn for the purpose of disguise. At the feet of the foremost was placed a child; and though he restrained the cry that rose to his lips, the tortured father recognized in him his son,—but so emaciated, so deathly pale, with such wild, startled eyes, gazing like a hunted creature before him, yet seeing nothing, that he could scarcely credit it was the same beautiful, sensitive, highly-strung Norberto who had been wrested from him but a short month before.
At the sight the father felt an almost irresistible impulse to precipitate himself upon those fiends who thus dared to mock him; but even had his hands been free to grasp the pistol in his belt, to have done so would have been to bring upon himself certain death. As it was he could but look with blind rage from the bags of coin he carried to the brigands who stood like statues, the right hand of the foremost laid upon the throat of the trembling boy. Even in that desperate moment Don Gregorio noticed that the hand was whiter and more slender than the hands of common men are wont to be; the nails were well formed and well kept, though there was a bruise or mark on the second one, as though it had met some recent injury. He was not conscious at the time that he noticed this, but it came to him afterward. The foremost man did not speak; it was the other who in a soft voice, as evenly modulated as though to words of purest courtesy, bade the Señor Garcia welcome, and thanked him for his prompt appearance.
“Let us dispense with compliments,” said Don Gregorio, huskily. “Here is the money you have demanded for my child. I know something of the honor of bandits, and as you can gain nothing by falsifying your word, I have chosen to trust in it. Here am I, alone with the gold,” and he poured it out on the rock at the child’s feet,—“count it if you will;” and he put out his hand and laid it upon the child’s shoulder. As he did so his hand touched the brigand’s, and both started, glaring like two tigers before they spring; but at that moment Norberto bounded over the scattered heap of coin and into his father’s arms.
As he felt that slight form within his grasp the father reeled, and his sight failed him; a voice presently recalled him to his senses, and glancing up he saw the two men still standing motionless, with their pistols levelled upon him and the child.
“The Señor will find it best to withdraw backward,” said the bandit; “there is not space here for me to have the honor of passing and leading the way, and it is even too narrow for your grace to turn. You will find your horse at the entrance to the gorge; it has been well cared for. Adios, Señor, and may every felicity attend this fortunate termination of our negotiations.”
“I doubt not there will,” cried Don Gregorio, though in a voice of perfect politeness, “for I swear to you I will unearth the villains who have tortured and robbed me, and give myself a moment of exquisite joy with every drop of life-blood I slowly wring from them. You have my gold, and I have my child, and now—Vengeance!”