Part 27

The new-comer seemed to have risen out of the ground, so stealthily had he approached. It would have been quite possible for him, tall as he was, to have skirted the wall without observation from any one within the enclosure. But undoubtedly he had taken no precaution in that solitary place, which except at funeral times was shunned as the haunt of ghosts and ill-omened birds and reptiles, and thus had come unexpectedly upon the motionless figure of the tall young man clothed in a plain riding-suit of black, with bright conspicuous locks at the moment uncovered, and fair-skinned face of a characteristic American type,—all unremarkable in themselves but associated in the mind of the observer with one whom he had seen but twice or thrice, and this on the mad night when the moon had shone down upon a victim quivering in the death-agony above which he had exulted.

The two men held each the other’s gaze in silence for a full minute, both unmindful of the common courtesy usual in such chance encounters in solitary places. Then recovering from the superstitious awe which had overpowered him, the Mexican stepped over the broken wall. Ashley noticed as he did so that heavy silver spurs were on his heels, and that the fringed sides of his leathern trousers were stained as though with hard riding, and that, as if from habit, rather than any purpose of menace, his nervous hand closed upon the pistol in his scarlet band, as with a few long strides he reached the spot on which Ashley stood with that air of defiance which a sudden intrusion upon a solitude however secure naturally arouses in a man who is neither a coward nor an adept in the self-command that is perhaps the most perfect substitute for invincible courage.

“Señor,” said the Mexican, “your pistols are on your saddle. You are right; this is an evil habit to wear them so readily at one’s side. Pardon me if in my surprise I assumed an attitude of menace; but these are troublous times. One scarcely expects to find a cavalier alone in such a place.” He looked around him with a smile, which did not hinder a quiver of the lip expressing an excitement which his commonplace words denied.

Ashley regarded the speaker with ever increasing repugnance. It was true his pistols hung from the saddle, but there was a small knife in his belt, and his hand wandered to it stealthily as he answered: “Señor, I make no inquiry why you are here, and on foot,—which you must acknowledge might well cause some curiosity in this place; but in all courtesy I trust your errand is a happier one than mine. Whatever it is, I will not intrude upon it longer than will suffice to plant this cross.” And with an air of perfect security, yet with his knife in hand, he bent to the work, which the other regarded with an almost incredulous gaze,—the preservation of a grave or its tokens being a sort of sentimentality to which by tradition and training he was a stranger; and to see it exhibited for the first time in this God’s acre of laborers, almost sufficed to dissipate the impression the unexpected encounter had made upon him. As Ashley quietly pursued his work, the new-comer had an opportunity to look at him narrowly. After all, this one was like many another American! Yet there was something in the young man’s appearance that brought the sweat to the brow of the soldier; he pushed back his hat, and breathed hard. As he did so, Ashley braced the cross against his knee. The action brought the letters into clear and direct view. The eyes of the Mexican rested upon them. He fell back a step or two in superstitious awe, involuntarily exclaiming:

“_Cristo!_ was _he_ buried here? And who are you?”

Ashley glanced up. There was a revelation to him in the questioner’s disordered and ashy countenance. He dropped the cross, sprang over the grave, and seized the stranger by the right arm. “Who are you who ask?” he cried. “What do you know of the man who is buried there?”

“My faith! you are a brave man to put such questions!” retorted the new-comer, wrenching himself free. Ashley had spoken in English, but the violence of his act had interpreted his words. “Take your pistols and defend yourself, if you are here for vengeance. Kill him? Yes; I killed him as I would a dog. Faith, I thought it was his accursed ghost that had risen to challenge me!”

“I am his cousin! Assassin, give me reasons for your deed!” cried Ashley, furiously, yet with a remembrance that to every criminal should be allowed some chance of justification.

But the Mexican seemed little inclined to profit by it.

“Reasons!” cried he. “Yes, such reasons as I gave him when I thrust the knife into his heart.” He raised his pistol and fired. The shot passed so close to Ashley’s temple that he heard it whiz through the air. In the same instant the two men clinched. The horse, which during the controversy had plunged and reared madly, broke away, and careering over the graves galloped wildly down the hillside. A fresh horse with its rider at the same instant dashed into the enclosure, and a voice cried, “For God’s sake my General! what adventure is this? Mount! mount! there is no time to be lost!”

The combatants at the sound of a third voice had involuntarily paused. Had the knife in the hand of the American been in that of the Mexican it would have sheathed itself in his opponent’s heart; but Ashley, less ready in its use, arrested his hand midway. His passion half spent, the scarcely healed wound throbbing in his shoulder, his strength exhausted, he had much ado to keep himself from staggering.

“A touch of my sabre would finish him,” said the new-comer coolly, as he reined in his restive horse, and put his hand on the long weapon swinging from his saddle. But the soldier stopped him.

“No killing in cold blood,” he exclaimed. “’Tis a madman, but his fury is over. What brings you here, Reyes? Were you not to wait at the rendezvous?”

“Wait!” he retorted, “this is no time to wait! We are already a day too late. A thousand men are on the road before us, my General! We let them pass us this morning as we lingered on the opposite side of the mountain in the Devil’s gate!”

“And the troops are there still?” cried the other furiously. “Where is Choolooke? Did you not think to bring me a horse? Back to the Zahuan, man! We must begin the march this very night. I know Ruiz; he will yield in a moment at sight of me!”

“Not he!” answered Reyes. “He has a new patroness; Doña Isabel herself is with him.”

“Isabel!” cried the officer with an oath. “Ah, then, Tres Hermanos is partisan at last! _Carrhi!_ my lady Isabel shall find what she has begun shall be soon ended!” He put a small silver whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast, which was answered by a neigh. A black horse lifted its head and looked over the wall with a gaze of almost human intelligence.

“He followed me at a word,” exclaimed Reyes, “and stood by the wall like a statue when I bade him. Never was there such another horse as your black Choolooke, my General. Even the stampede of that unbroken brute that was tethered here could not startle him.”

“Ay, I discipline horses better than I do men,—eh, Choolooke?” The horse with its jingling accoutrements had cantered into the enclosure, and with one bound his owner was in the saddle.

All had passed in the few minutes in which Ashley was recovering breath, and in utter bewilderment endeavoring to gain some insight into the meaning of this rapid transformation scene, of which he himself had formed a part. As his late opponent sprang into the saddle, he could have fancied he heard the sound of the bugle, so alert were the man’s movements, so soldierly his bearing. But in the midst of his involuntary admiration he did not forget the extraordinary relations in which they stood to each other. He threw himself before the horse at the imminent risk of being trampled down. “Your name!” he cried. “By your own admission you are my cousin’s murderer. We must meet again! I am Ashley Ward; and you?”

“Out of the way!” cried the rider, checking his horse by a dexterous turn of his hand. “My name? Ah, yes! Tell them there,” and he nodded in the direction of the hacienda, “they will soon have reason never to forget it!” He hesitated; plunged the spurs into his already impatient steed, and dashed furiously away, followed by Reyes; then rose in his stirrups to shout back in defiance the name—“Ramirez!”

XXXI.

Ramirez! Ashley’s heart bounded, his brain throbbed dizzily yet acutely. Here was no obscure assassin, who once escaping him would perhaps be lost forever.

The name was on every lip with those of Juarez, Ortega, Degollado, Miramon, and a score of other popular chieftains who of one party or another, or of independent factions, attracted to themselves a host of followers, more by their own personal magnetism than for the sake of any principles they represented. In that time of anarchy any head that rose above the common herd led enthusiastic multitudes, who followed a nod and applauded to the echo even one deed of daring. But Ramirez held his prestige by no such recent and uncertain tenure; throughout the long years of revolution he had been a central figure in the bloody drama. Even his recent defeat at El Toro and his subsequent disappearance had added but a fresh glamor of mystery to his adventurous career, without detracting from the almost superstitious awe with which he was regarded. It was believed that he would reappear when and where least expected. Ashley Ward had smiled covertly at the strange and daring escapades attributed to this man. He had become in his mind a figure of romance; and here in the broad day he had risen before him, the self-denounced murderer of John Ashley,—and as suddenly as he had come, so had he escaped him.

Thinking no more of the cross, which had fallen upon the ground, hiding beneath it the name that had been so long preserved for so strange a purpose, Ashley Ward turned from the sunken graves and striding across the mounds, scarred and broken by the sacrilegious tread of the horses’ feet, stood for a moment upon the broken wall, scanning the country in his excitement for some sign of the desperate men who but a few moments before had urged their restive steeds up the steep path and disappeared over the crest of the hill. He saw his own recreant steed galloping toward the hacienda walls, keeping the high-road, on past the reduction-works and the long stretch of open country beyond, and plunging and rearing at the fatal mesquite-tree. The superstitious vaqueros had instinctively imbued their animals with the same irrational terrors in which they had themselves been trained. Yet no sight of ghost or smell of blood lingered there to rouse memory or vengeance. Their waiting-place had been that long-forgotten grave upon the desolate hillside.

Ashley leaped from the wall and rapidly began the descent to the valley. The sun was still high in the heavens, for the scene we have recorded had passed in less than a brief quarter of an hour. As he walked on, gradually falling into a more natural pace, the whole matter took definite form and coherence in his mind. That which had been so unexpected, so unnatural, seemed to be the event to which his whole journey to Mexico, all his wanderings, his strange and wearisome experiences, had inevitably and naturally tended. And then arose a point beyond. His work at Tres Hermanos seemed ended; the primal cause of his being there was forgotten. The definite thought now in his mind was to reach the hacienda, provide himself anew with horse, guide, and arms, and follow on the path which Ramirez had chosen, and upon which he would sooner or later re-appear, decoyed by the rich booty that Doña Isabel had intrusted to the weak and presumably faithless Ruiz. Could he reach and warn her in time?

Ashley’s scarce-healed wound was throbbing painfully, the way was long, the heat intense; yet he pressed on resolutely, though at last he staggered as he went. He sat down to rest awhile among the dry rushes of the spent watercourse, under a straggling cottonwood-tree, the few poor leaves of which scarcely sufficed to shade him from the fierce rays of the sun. A fever heat was in his veins; wild theories and speculations passed through his brain,—some of them, perhaps, not far from being keys to the mystery of that tragedy which that day for the first time had become to his mind other than a vague and gloomy fantasy. Now, like the murderer himself, it was real, absorbing, appalling.

The young man rose and again pressed on. After the descent to the long rude wall of the reduction-works, he skirted it slowly, thinking as he went how changed the aspect of the place must be since his cousin had ridden forth to his death. How proudly John had written, and almost vauntingly, of the prosperity his management had inaugurated, of the crowds of laden animals that passed in and out of the wide gates, of the men who led their slow, laborious lives among those primitive mills and wide floors of trodden ores.

Ashley glanced at the great square mass of walls and towers of Tres Hermanos, glistening in the distance. To his weary eye it looked far away; yet doubtless he thought it had been but the ride of a few eager minutes to the lover, as he went at midnight to cast a glance at the walls that circled his mistress, or to rein his horse beneath her window that he might win a word or glance from her who whispered from above. These, Ashley had heard, were lovers’ ways in Mexico; he did not know that no maiden of Tres Hermanos ever occupied one of the few apartments whose windows opened toward the outer air. Yet as he debated the matter with himself, it became more and more probable to him that John Ashley had upon the fatal night been actually within the walls of the hacienda, and been stealthily followed thence by his treacherous rival,—for what, he thought, even to a Spaniard, could justify so foul a murder but the falseness of his mistress, the triumph of a hated rival? Pedro’s taciturnity and gloom Ashley construed as proofs of his complicity in the crime. Even then Ramirez had been a chieftain of renown, and Pedro in his youth had been a soldier, a free rider, of whom strange tales were told. Was it not probable that he had opened the gate at a comrade’s bidding,—or, more likely still, had bidden him wait beneath the tree where the favored lover was wont to mount his horse, and so take him unawares? Ashley remembered that such, it had been said, had been the manner of his cousin’s taking off. He had been slain with the swiftness and sureness of a secret and unhesitating avenger.

The ardent youth railed at the mocking chances that had combined to suffer Ramirez to escape him in the unpremeditated struggle in which they had clinched with a deadly enmity. In such a struggle he could have found himself the victor without remorse, or could have died without regret; but it was not in his nature to follow a man for blood. Yet neither could he shut his ears to that cry for vengeance, for justice, which seemed ringing through the sultry stillness,—the more importunate as the possibilities of their attainment shaped themselves in his mind.

That this must be a personal matter between himself and Ramirez was clear. At any time it would probably have been useless for an alien to have denounced so popular and influential a man as the proud and daring _revolucionario_. To attempt his arrest for a murder committed years before and probably in rivalry for a lady’s favor, would be but to throw a new mystery about him, and add a fresh legend of romance to those which already made him rather a character of ideal chivalry than of mere vulgar, every-day lawlessness and semi-barbarity. Though the brilliant adventurer was now under a temporary cloud, one threat of attack from law would make him again a popular idol; indeed it was likely that a _pronunciamiento_ in his favor would be the immediate result, and that in falling into his hands the American would lose, if not his life, at least all opportunity either of obtaining the satisfaction of the law for his cousin’s death, or of investigating further those doubts and probabilities which he had forgotten, but which now came upon him with redoubled force.

The excited Ashley planned in his mind to refresh himself upon reaching the hacienda, and demanding horse and guide to set forth upon that very night, hoping to rejoin the force at daybreak. It was useless, he reflected, to waste further time in idle questionings. It was to Doña Isabel herself he would appeal, and warning her of the danger that threatened her from the bandit chieftain, induce her to make common cause with him against one who for years must have been their common enemy. Impossible was it for him to solve the mystery of the relations in which the several actors in this strange drama in which he was so unexpectedly taking part, stood either to one another, or to himself. There was but one fact certain; by that alone he could connect himself with beings who seemed almost of another world,—the one undoubted fact of the discovery of John Ashley’s murderer.

Ashley’s ready apprehension of the public mind had been helped by what he knew to be the actual state of affairs in the ranks to which Doña Isabel had intrusted the safety of her person, trusting to the resources which were at her command, and to the present ascendency of Gonzales, to bind those soldiers of fortune to the cause she had espoused. Perhaps none knew better than she the elements that an alluring chance of gain or a transient enthusiasm had drawn together; but she could not know how near the fire lay to the straw, and how at her very side were those who in the name of patriotism—or, like Chinita, for a personal sentiment as unexplainable as it was imaginative and ardent—would sacrifice her dearest plans, and think it a grand and noble deed to raise the ubiquitous and dashing Ramirez upon the fall of the slow and cautious Gonzales. Ashley had imperfectly comprehended the scheme or its bearings; he had little understood, and felt but little interest in, those strange complexities and personalities of Mexican politics; but now a sudden party zeal and horror of treason seized him. Where was Pedro Gomez, who, having played traitor once, might do so a hundred times more? Where was Pepé? Had he rejoined the troops, or had the detour to the graveyard been but a clever plan for eluding them? Were these, and perhaps Ruiz too, the tools of Ramirez? Yet the latter had appeared to have ridden far; the news of the gathering and departure of the troops had appeared to have astounded as much as it had enraged him. Who had carried the news to Reyes?

The way was long and the youth’s excitement waning; his recent illness and still aching wound began to declare their effects. In his full vigor Ashley Ward would have found the walk under the glaring sunshine—which, though no longer vertical, was fierce and blinding as it neared the western hilltops—more than he would have chosen for an afternoon’s stroll. Weak as he was, and becoming painfully conscious that he had fasted since morning, he was glad to lean sometimes against the high adobe wall and measure with his eye the slowly decreasing distance. It was a landmark on his way when he caught sight of the heavy gate set in the wall of the reduction-works; he knew then just how much farther he must go. He had no thought of actually approaching it, but he noticed with surprise that one heavy valve was slightly ajar; and with that sudden collapse which is apt to assail the overtasked frame at the unexpected sight of an open door, however meagre the entertainment it may suggest, he dragged himself onward with the natural belief that he should find within some servant or attaché of the great house. But when he reached the gate and looked through the narrow aperture, a perfect stillness reigned within. No horse stamped in the courtyard; no spurred heel rang on the pavement. Great cacti were pushing their gaunt and prickly branches into the narrow space, as if stretching longing arms out into the wide world from which they had been so long shut in.

With some effort Ashley thrust back the strong and aggressive barrier, and forced his way in. Rank grass, which was at that season yellow and matted, had grown up between the cobble-stones, and raised them in little heaps, over which the lizards ran. One—fiery red—stopped as Ashley’s boot-heel woke the echoes, and turned a wondering ear, then glided swiftly on.

Between the main building and the offices there was a small arched lobby, through which one entered the great court, upon which piles of broken ores and the long dried masses were spread. In this lobby in the olden time the workmen had been stopped by the watchman or gatekeeper and searched,—a proceeding to which they daily submitted with indifference, holding their arms on high while the practised searcher ran his hands over their thin and scanty garments, shook out the coarse serape and tattered sombrero, peered among the rows of glistening teeth and under the tongue, for those fragments of rich ore or amalgam which in spite of all precautions, or by the connivance of the searcher, reached the outer world, netting in the aggregate a considerable surplus to the income of the laborers, which found its way to the gambling tables, or was spent in the adornment of their wives,—as was proved by the great decline in the village of the manufacture of filagree ornaments of quaint and delicate designs upon the closing of the Garcia mining-works.

Ashley, with a feeling of curiosity or a sense of impending action, which renewed his strength as a tonic might have done, noticed that the door upon the side of the lobby that opened into the main building or living rooms was also ajar. He glanced in, but except where the long ray of light stole in through the aperture, which his person partially obscured, all was so dim that he saw only imperfectly a few scattered articles of furniture,—and they appeared to be so old and battered that they were scarce worth the protection which the great padlock and rusty key, hanging from a staple in the door, indicated had been afforded them.

With a feeling of awe, Ashley remembered that his cousin must have lived, and perhaps had lain dead, in that room. With nervous energy he thrust open the door, and the light streamed in. He started as his eyes fell upon the floor. It was of large square bricks, thickly spread with the dust of many years, but impressed with footprints so blurred that, dazzled as his eyes were, he could not tell whether they were those of man, woman, or child. They seemed mysterious, ghostly. There was no sound of human presence. His heart beat as it had not done in all the excitement of that day.

“I am here! I have been waiting as you bade me,” said a low, frightened voice. The words came so unexpectedly that Ashley scarce understood them. He stepped forward and glanced around searchingly. In the farther corner of the room a female figure was in the act of rising from a low seat on which it had crouched. The face was half-averted, the dark reboso was drawn over it with the left hand, the right was outstretched as if in supplicating, almost compulsory, welcome.

“Good God!”—“_Dios mio!_” The ejaculations were simultaneous; the girl sank to the floor, the young man involuntarily drew back.

“Señorita!” he exclaimed in a voice of incredulity, “Señorita, you here and alone?”

“_Maria Sanctissima!_ not the General Ramirez!” he heard her moan; yet in the fright and confusion there seemed an accent of relief. “Don ’Guardo! Oh, what has brought you here? Oh, Señor, believe me—”