The White Scalper Part 14

"You are always prudent, Don Felix."

"I, not at all; I merely wish to avenge myself on those bandits who have plundered so many magnificent haciendas, and hatred renders a man prudent."

"Whatever be the motive that impels you, it gives you good inspirations, that is the main point. But let us return to our business: what do you want with me?"

"Merely to know two things."

"What are they?"

"Whether General Rubio is really satisfied with the plan I submitted to him?"

"You have a proof of it before you; if he were not so, should I be here?"

"That is true."

"Now for the second."

"That is of an extremely delicate nature."

"Ah, ah! You pique my curiosity," the Colonel said, laughingly.

Don Felix frowned and lowered his voice, as it were involuntarily.

"It is very serious, Don Juan," he continued; "I wish, before the battle, to know if you have retained towards me that esteem and friendship with which you deigned to honour me at the Larch-tree hacienda?"

The Colonel turned away in embarra.s.sment.

"Why ask that question at this moment?" he remarked.

Don Felix turned pale and fixed a flashing glance upon him.

"Answer me, I implore yon, Don Juan," he said, pressingly. "Whatever you may think, whatever opinion you may have of me, I wish to know it; it must be so."

"Do not press me, I beg, Don Felix. What can you care for any opinion I may have, which is isolated and unimportant?"

"What can I care, do you ask?" he exclaimed, hotly; "but it is, indeed, useless to press you farther, for I know all I wish to know. Thank you, Don Juan, I ask no more. When a man of so n.o.ble a character and such a loyal heart as yours condemns the conduct of another man, it is because that conduct is really blameable."

"Well, be it so; since you absolutely insist, I will explain my views, Don Felix. Yes, I blame but do not condemn you, for I cannot and will not be your judge. Don Felix, I am internally convinced in my soul and conscience that the man who makes himself, no matter the motive that impels him, the agent of treachery, commits worse than a crime, for he is guilty of an act of cowardice! Such a man I can pity, but no longer esteem."

The ex-Mayor-domo listened to these harsh words with a forehead dripping with perspiration, but with head erect and eye sparkling with a gloomy fire. When the officer stopped he bowed coldly and took the hand which Don Juan did not attempt to draw from his grasp.

"It is well," he said; "your words are rude, but they are true. I thank you for your frankness, Don Juan; I know now what remains for me to do."

The Colonel, who had involuntarily allowed his feelings of the moment to carry him away, fancied that he had gone too far, and was alarmed at the consequences of his imprudence.

"Don Felix," he added, "forgive me; I spoke to you like a madman."

"Come, come, Don Juan," he replied, with a bitter smile, "do not attempt to recall your words, you were but the echo of my conscience; what you have said aloud my heart has often whispered to me. Fear not that I shall let myself be overcome by a pa.s.sing feeling of pa.s.sion. No! I am one of those men who, when they have once entered a path, persevere in it at all hazards. But enough of this; I notice a dust, which probably announces our friends," he added, with a poignant irony. "Farewell, Don Juan, farewell."

And, not waiting for the answer Don Juan was preparing to give him, Don Felix spurred his horse, turned hastily round, and went off as rapidly as he had come. The Colonel looked after him for a moment thoughtfully.

"Alas!" he muttered, "that man is now more unhappy than culpable, or I am greatly mistaken; if he be not killed today it will not be for want of seeking death."

He then buried himself again in the chaparral with a melancholy shake of his head. In the meanwhile, the Texan army rapidly advanced; like the Mexicans, each mounted man had a foot soldier behind him. At about a gunshot from the cross roads, the Texans came upon the edge of the trembling prairie; they were consequently obliged to halt in order to call in their flankers, scattered on the right and left, which naturally produced a momentary disorder, promptly repaired, however, by the activity of the chief, then they started again.

The order of march was necessarily altered, the path grew narrower at every step, and the cavalry were unable to keep their ranks any longer.

However, from the moment of the start, the vanguard had not announced any danger. The army, trusting in the experience of the officer detached to clear the way, marched in perfect security, which was augmented by the hope of speedily reaching the mouth of the Rio Trinidad, and at once embarking for Galveston.

The Jaguar alone did not share the general confidence: accustomed for a long period to a war of ambushes, the ground he now trod seemed to him so suitable in every way for a surprise, that he could not persuade himself that they would reach the seash.o.r.e without an attack. In a word, the young Chief had an intuition of approaching danger. He guessed it, felt it, so to speak, though he could not tell from what quarter it would come, and suddenly burst on his comrades and himself.

There is nothing so terrible as such a situation, where a man is obliged to stand on his defence against s.p.a.ce. The desert tranquilly surrounds him on all sides, in vain does he interrogate the air and earth, to find a clue which constantly escapes him, and yet he has in his heart a certainty for which he finds it impossible to account! He can only answer questions with the enigmatical, though strictly logical phrase, "I do not know, and yet I am sure of it."

The Jaguar resolved, whatever the consequences might be, to avoid personally a surprise, whose results would be disastrous to those he had vowed to protect and defend, that is to say, to Tranquil and Carmela.

Gradually slackening the pace of his detachment, he succeeded in leaving a sufficiently wide distance between himself and the main body, to regain almost entirely his liberty of action. His first care was to collect round the cart the men in whom he placed most confidence. Then selecting those of his comrades whom he supposed most conversant with Indian tricks, he placed them under the command of John Davis, with orders to force their way, as well as they could, through the chaparral that skirted both sides of the track, and enclosed it so completely, that it was impossible to see anything beyond.

It could not enter the Jaguar's mind that the Mexicans would not profit by the opportunity offered them by the imprudence of the Texans, to try and take their revenge for the defeats they had suffered. In this view he was entirely supported by Davis, who, it will be remembered, had urgently, though vainly, begged the Commander-in-Chief to give up his plan. The two men, who had been so long acquainted, understood each other at the first word, and John Davis immediately spread out his men, as a forlorn hope, on either side of the road. The Jaguar proceeded to the cart after this, and addressed the hunter.

"Well, Tranquil," he said to him, "how do you find yourself?"

"Better," the other answered; "I hope within a few days to be sufficiently recovered to give up this wearisome position."

"And your strength?"

"Is rapidly returning."

"All the better. Would you be capable of firing in your own defence, without leaving the cart?"

"I think so. But do you fear any trap? The spot where we now are, appears most favourable for it."

"Does it not! Well, you have spoken the truth, I fear an ambuscade. Here is a rifle, and if needs must, make use of it."

"Trust to me. Thanks," he added, as he clutched the weapon with a delight he did not attempt to conceal.

The Jaguar then placed himself at the head of his troop, and gave orders to set out again. Long before this, the main body of the army had pa.s.sed the cross, the heads of the columns were already entering the defile, a movement which, owing to the narrowness, produced some disorder the leaders were trying to repress, when suddenly a shower of canister burst from the Cerro Pardo, and made wide gaps in the crowded ranks of the Texans. At the same instant a terrible, shout was heard from the other end of the gorge, and Don Felix Paz' cuadrilla appeared galloping at full speed toward the main body.

At the first moment the Texans had to make way for these hors.e.m.e.n, whom they supposed to be closely pursued by a still invisible enemy; but their surprise changed into terror and stupor when they saw this vanguard dash at them and mercilessly sabre them with shouts of "Mejico!

Mejico! Federacion!"

The Texans were betrayed! Suffering from a terror that almost attained to madness, unable to form in this limited spot, decimated by the canister incessantly discharged at them, and sabred by Don Felix'

cuadrilla, they had but one thought--that of flight. But at the moment when they tried to turn, the terrible cry of "Mejico! Mejico! mueran los rebeldes!" resounded like a funeral knell in their rear, and Colonel Melendez, at the head of his five hundred horses, dashed at the Texans, who were thus caught between two fires.

The medley then a.s.sumed the fearful proportions of one of those mediaeval butcheries in which man, having attained the paroxysm of fury, intoxicated by the sharp smell of blood, the powder, smoke, and the din of battle, kills for the sake of killing with the pleasure of a wild beast, growing excited by the ma.s.sacre of every victim that falls, and far from satiating his hatred, finds it increase in proportion to the corpses piled up on the blood-stained ground.

Flight was impossible, and resistance seemed the same. At this supreme hour, when all appeared lost and the cause of liberty was about to be eternally buried under the pile of corpses, an irresistible movement suddenly took place in the terrified crowd, which opened like a ripe fruit through the b.l.o.o.d.y track thus made by main force. The Jaguar now dashed forward, splendid in his wrath and despair, brandishing his machete above his head, and followed by his brave cuadrilla. A cry of delight saluted the arrival of the daring freebooter, who had been obliged to cut his way through Colonel Melendez' Mexicans, as they vainly strove to stop his pa.s.sage.

"My lads!" the Jaguar shouted, in a voice that rose above the din of battle, "We are surrounded by the enemy, and have been betrayed and led into a trap by a coward. Let us show these Mexicans, who believe us already conquered, and are congratulating themselves on their easy victory, what men like ourselves are capable of. Follow me--forward!

Forward!"