The Pirates of the Prairies Part 39

Ellen felt moved with pity at the sight of this young and lovely woman, who lay on the floor of the hut, and whom life seemed to have quitted forever. She felt for her, although she never remembered to have seen her before, a sympathy for which she could not account, and which instinctively attracted her.

Who was this woman? How had she, still so young, become mixed up in these scenes of murder and a.s.sociated with these savage prairie men, to whom every human being is an enemy, every valuable article a booty?

Whence arose this strange ascendancy which she exerted over outlaws, whom she made cry like children?

All these thoughts crossed Ellen's mind, and heightened, were that possible, the interest she felt in the stranger. And yet, in her heart, a vague fear, an undefinable presentiment warned her to be on her guard, and that this woman, gifted with, a strange character and fatal beauty, was an enemy, who would destroy her happiness forever.

As Ellen was one of those rare women for whom evil sentiments did not exist, and who made it a principle to obey, under all circ.u.mstances, the impulse of her heart, without reflecting on the consequences that might result from it, she silenced the feeling of revolt within her, and bent over White Gazelle.

And with that exquisite tact, innate in the female heart, she sat down by the side of the sufferer, laid her beautiful head on her knees, loosened her vest, and gave her that busy attention of which the other s.e.x alone possess the secret.

The two maidens, thus grouped on the uneven floor of a wretched Indian hut, offered an exquisite picture. Both deliciously lovely, though of different beauty--for Ellen had the most lovely golden locks ever seen, while the Gazelle, on the contrary, had the warm tint of the Spanish woman, and hair of a bluish black--presented the complete type, in two different races, of the beau-ideal of woman, that misunderstood and incomprehensible being, the fallen angel in whose heart G.o.d seems to have let fall a glorious beam of His divinity, and who retains a vague reminiscence of that Eden which she made us lose.

The American woman, that perfect whole, a composition of graces, volcanic and raging pa.s.sions, angel and demon, who loves and hates simultaneously, and who makes the man she prefers feel in the same second the joys of paradise and the nameless tortures of the Inferno!

Who could even a.n.a.lyze this impossible nature, in which virtue and vices, strangely amalgamated, seem to personify the terrible convulsions of the soil on which she lives, and which has created her?

For a long time, Ellen's cares were thrown away. White Gazelle remained pale and cold in her arms. The maiden began to grow alarmed. She knew not to what she should have recourse, when the stranger made a slight movement, and a faint ruddiness tinged her cheeks. She uttered a profound sigh, and her eyelids painfully rose. She looked round her in amazement, and then closed her eyes again.

After a moment, she opened them once more, raised her hand to her brow as if to dissipate the clouds that obscured her mind, fixed her eyes on the person who was attending to her, and then, with a frown and quivering lips, she, tore herself from the arms that entwined her, and, bounding like a panther, sought shelter in one of the corners of the hut, without ceasing to gaze fixedly at the young American, who was startled at this strange conduct, and could not understand it.

The two girls remained thus for a few seconds, face to face, devouring each other with their eyes, but not exchanging a syllable. No other sound could be heard in the hut, save the panting respiration of the two females.

"Why do you shun me?" Ellen at length asked in her harmonious voice, soft as the cooing of a dove. "Do I frighten you?" she added, with a smile.

The Spaniard listened to her as if she did not catch her meaning, and shook her head so pa.s.sionately that she broke the ribbon confining her hair, which fell in thick ringlets over her white shoulders, and veiled them.

"Who are you?" she asked, impetuously, with an accent of menace and anger.

"Who am I?" Ellen replied, in a firm voice, in which a slight tinge of reproach was perceptible. "I am the woman who has just saved your life."

"And who told you I wished it to be saved?"

"In doing so, I only consulted my own heart."

"Oh, yes, I understand," the Gazelle said, ironically. "You are one of those women called in your country Quakeresses, who spend their life in preaching."

"I am nothing of the sort," Ellen said, softly. "I am a woman who suffers like yourself, and whom your misfortunes affect."

"Yes, yes," the Spaniard shrieked, as she writhed her hands despairingly, and burst into tears--"I suffer all the torments of h.e.l.l."

Ellen regarded her for a moment with compa.s.sion, and walked towards her.

"Do not cry, poor girl!" she said to her, mistaking the cause that made her shed tears. "You are in safety here. No one will do you any harm."

The Spaniard threw up her head haughtily.

"Nay!" she said, impetuously. "Do you fancy, then, that I am not in a condition to defend myself, were I insulted? What need have I of your protection?"

And, roughly seizing Ellen's arm, she shook her pa.s.sionately as she said:--

"Who are you? What are you doing here? Answer!"

"You, who were with the bandits when they attacked this village, should know me," Ellen replied, drily.

"Yes, I know you," the Spaniard said presently, in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "You are the woman whom the genius of evil brought across my path to rob me of all my happiness! I did not expect to find you here, but I am delighted at doing so, for I can at length tell you how I hate you," she added, stamping her foot pa.s.sionately. "Yes, I hate you!"

Ellen, in her heart, was alarmed at the stranger's violence; she tried in vain to explain her incomprehensible words.

"You hate me!" she replied, softly. "For what reason? I do not know you.

This is the first time that accident has brought us together. Up to this day, we never had any relations together, near or remote."

"Do you think so?" the Spaniard continued, with a cutting smile. "In truth," she added, "we never had any relations together. You are right, and yet I know you thoroughly. Miss Ellen, daughter of the squatter, the scalp hunter, the bandit, in a word, Red Cedar, and who dares to love Don Pablo de Zarate, as if you did not belong to an accursed race. Have I forgotten aught--are those all your t.i.tles? Answer, will you?" she said, thrusting her face, inflamed with pa.s.sion, close to Ellen's, and shaking her violently by the arm.

"I am, indeed, Red Cedar's daughter," Ellen answered, coldly; "but I do not understand what you mean by your allusion to Don Pablo de Zarate."

"Do you not, innocent lamb!" the Spaniard retorted with irony.

"And supposing it were so," the American answered with some haughtiness, "what does it concern you? By what right do you cross-question me?"

"By what right?" the Spaniard said, violently, but suddenly checked herself, and, biting her lips till the blood came, she folded her hands on her breast, and, surveying Ellen with a glance full of the utmost contempt, she continued:--

"In truth, you are an angel of purity and gentleness; your life has pa.s.sed calmly and softly at the hearth of honest and respectable parents, who inculcated in you at an early age all the virtues they practice so well--ah, ah! Is not that what you meant to say to me?-- while I, who am an a.s.sociate of brigands, who have spent my whole life on the prairie, who understand nothing of the narrow exigencies of your paltry civilisation, who have always breathed the sharp and savage air of liberty--by what right should I come to interfere in your family arrangements, and interfere in your chaste loves, whose sentimental and insipid incidents are so well regulated by feet and inches? You are right, I cannot, with my savage manner, and burning heart, cross your love, and destroy for a caprice all your combinations--I am, indeed, mad," she added, as she rudely repulsed the maiden.

She folded her arms on her chest, and leant against the wall of the hut in silence. Ellen looked at her for a while, and then said, in a soft and conciliating voice--

"I try in vain to understand your allusions, but if they refer to any fact effaced from my mind, if, under any circ.u.mstance, I may have unconsciously offended you, I am ready to offer you all the apologies you may require. Our position among these ferocious Indians is too critical for me not to try, by all means in my power, to draw more closely together the bonds of friendship between ourselves, the only representatives of the white race here, which alone can enable us to escape the snares laid for us, and resist the attacks that threaten us."

The Spaniard's face had gradually lost the hateful and wicked expression that disfigured it, and her features had become calmer. Now that she had reflected, she repented the imprudent words she had uttered on the first outburst of pa.s.sion. She would have liked to recall her secret; still she hoped that it was not too late to do so; and with that craft innate in woman, and which renders her so dangerous under certain circ.u.mstances, she resolved to deceive her companion, and efface from her mind the bad impression which her foolish words must have left there.

Hence it was with a smile, and in her softest voice, that she answered the American--

"You are good-hearted; I am not worthy of the attention you have paid me, or of the gentle words you address to me, after what I dared to say to you. But I am more unfortunate than wicked. Abandoned when a child, and adopted by the bandits with whom you saw me, the first sounds that struck my ear were cries of death, the first light I saw was the glare of incendiary fires. My life has been pa.s.sed in the desert, far from the towns, where people learn to grow better. I am an impetuous and obstinate girl; but, believe me, my heart is good; I can appreciate a kindness, and remember it. Alas! A girl in my position is more to be pitied than blamed."

"Poor child!" Ellen said, with involuntary emotion, "So young, and already so unhappy."

"Oh, yes, most unhappy," the Spaniard went on; "I never knew the sweetness of a mother's caresses, and the only family I have had is composed of the brigands, who accompanied the Apaches when they attacked you."

The girls remained seated side by side, with their arms intertwined and head on each other's shoulder, like two timid doves. They talked for a long time, describing their past life. Ellen, with the candour and frankness that formed the basis of her character, allowed her companion to draw from her all her secrets, harmless as they were, not perceiving that the dangerous woman who held her beneath the charm of her blandishments, continually excited her to confidence, while herself maintaining the utmost reserve.

The hours pa.s.sed thus rapidly, nearly the whole night slipped away in their confessions, which did not terminate till sleep, which never surrenders its sway over young and animated people, closed the drooping eyelids of the American girl.

The Spaniard did not sleep; when the other maiden's head fell on her chest she raised it cautiously, and laid it delicately on the skins and furs arranged to act as a bed; then, by the flickering and uncertain light of the pinewood torch fixed in the ground, which lit up the hut, she gazed long and attentively on the squatter's daughter.

Her face had lost its placid mask and a.s.sumed an expression of hatred of which such lovely features would have been thought incapable; with frowning brow, clenched teeth, and pallid cheeks, as she stood before the maiden, she might have been taken for the genius of evil, preparing to seize the victim which it holds fascinated and gasping beneath its deadly glance.

"Yes," she said, in a hollow voice, "this woman is lovely; she has all needed to be beloved by a man. She told me the truth--he loves her! And I," she added, with a movement of rage, "why does he not love me? I am lovely too--more lovely than this one, perhaps. How is it that he has been at least twenty times in my presence, and his heart has never been warmed by the fire that flashed from my eyes? Whence comes it that he has never noticed me, that all my advances to make him love me have remained futile, and that he has never thought of anyone but the woman lying asleep there, who is in my power, and whom I could kill if I pleased?"

While uttering these words she had drawn from her girdle a small stiletto, with a blade sharp as the tongue of a cascabel.

"No!" she added, after a moment's reflection, "No, it is not thus that she must die! She would not suffer enough. Oh, no! I mean her to endure all the sufferings that are lacerating me. Jealousy shall torture her heart as it has done mine for so long. _Voto a Dios!_ I will avenge myself as a Spanish woman should do. If he despise me, if he will not love me, neither of us shall have him; we shall both suffer, and her torture will alleviate mine. Oh! Oh!" she said, with a smile, as she walked round the sleeping girl with the m.u.f.fled tread of a wild beast; "fair-haired girl, with lily complexion, your cheeks covered with the velvety down of a peach, will ere long be as pale as mine, and your eyes, red with fever, will no longer find tears to soothe them."