Wood Rangers Part 58

"Let the murderer refute the charge. I have done."

"You hear him?" said Fabian, "what have you to say in your defence?"

A violent struggle between his conscience and his pride took place in Mediana's breast.

Pride however triumphed.

"Nothing," replied Don Antonio.

"Nothing!" answered Fabian, "but you do not perhaps know what a terrible duty I have to fulfil?"

"I can imagine it."

"And I," cried Fabian pa.s.sionately, "shall not flinch in accomplishing it. Yet, though my mother's blood cries out for vengeance, should you refute the charge, I would bless you still. Swear to me then, in the name of Mediana, which we bear in common, by your honour and the salvation of your soul, that you are innocent, and I shall be too happy to believe you."

Then, oppressed with an intolerable anguish, Fabian awaited his reply.

But, gloomy and inflexible as the fallen archangel, Mediana was silent.

At this moment Diaz advanced towards the judges and the prisoner.

"I have listened," said he, "with the utmost attention to your accusation again Don Estevan de Arechiza, whom I also know to be the Duke de Armada; may I express my thoughts freely?"

"Speak!" said Fabian.

"One point seems to me doubtful. I do not know whether the crime you attribute to this n.o.ble cavalier was committed by him; but, admitting that to be the case, have you any right to condemn him? In accordance with the laws of our frontier, where no court may be held, it is only the nearest relatives of the victim who are ent.i.tled to claim the blood of the murderer.

"Don Tiburcio's youth was pa.s.sed in this country. I knew him as the adopted son of Marcos Arellanos.

"Who can prove that Tiburcio Arellanos is the son of the murdered lady?

"How, after so many years, can it be possible for this hunter, formerly a sailor, to recognise in the midst of these solitudes, the young man, whom as a child he beheld only for an instant on a foggy night?"

"Answer, Bois-Rose," said Fabian, coldly.

The Canadian again rose.

"I ought, in the first place, to state," said the old hunter, "that it was not only for a few moments on a foggy night that I saw the child in question. During the s.p.a.ce of two years, after having saved him from certain death, I kept him on board the vessel in which I was a sailor.

"The features of his son could not be more deeply impressed upon the memory of a father than those of that child were on mine.

"How then can you affirm that it is impossible I should recognise him?

"When you are travelling in the desert, where there is no beaten track, are you not guided by the course of streams, by the character of the trees, by the conformation of their trunks, by the growth of the moss which clothes them, and by the stars of heaven? and when at another season, or even twenty years afterwards, should the rains have swelled the streams, or the sun have dried them up, should the once naked trees be clothed with leaves, should their trunks have expanded, and moss covered their roots, even should the north star have changed its position in the heavens, and you again beheld it, would you not recognise both star and stream?"

"Doubtless," replied Diaz, "the man who has experience in the desert, is seldom deceived."

"When you meet a stranger in the forest, who answers you with the cry of a bird or the voice of an animal, which is to serve as a rallying signal to you or your friends, do you not immediately say, 'This man is one of us'?"

"a.s.suredly."

"Well, then; I recognise the child in the grown man, just as you recognise the small shrub in the tall tree; or the stream that once murmured softly in the roaring and swollen torrent of to-day. I know this child again by a mode of speech, which twenty years have scarcely altered."

"Is not this meeting a somewhat strange coincidence?" interrupted Diaz, now almost convinced of the Canadian's veracity.

"G.o.d," cried Bois-Rose, solemnly, "who commands the breeze to waft across the desert the fertilising seeds of the male palm to the female date-tree--G.o.d, who confides to the wind which destroys, to the devastating torrent, or to the bird of pa.s.sage, the grain which is to be deposited a thousand miles from the plant that produced it--is he not also able to send upon the same path two human beings made in his image?"

Diaz was silent a moment; then having nothing more to advance in contradiction to the Canadian's truthful words whose honest manner of speech carried with it an irresistible conviction, he turned towards Pepe:

"Did you," said he, "also recognise in Arellanos' adopted child, the Countess de Mediana's son!"

"It would be impossible for any one who ever saw his mother long to mistake him. Enough! let the Duke de Armada contradict me."

Don Antonio, too proud to utter a falsehood, could not deny the truth without degrading himself in the eyes of his accusers, unless he destroyed the only means of defence to which his pride and the secret wish of his heart allowed him to have recourse.

"It is true," said he, "that this man is of my own blood. I cannot deny it without polluting my lips with a lie, and an untruth is the offspring of cowardice."

Diaz inclined his head, regained his seat, and was silent.

"You have heard," said Fabian, "that I am indeed the son of the woman, whom this man murdered; therefore I claim the right of avenging her.

What then do the laws of the desert decree?"

"Eye for eye," said Bois-Rose.

"Tooth for tooth," added Pepe.

"Blood for blood," continued Fabian; "a death for a death!"

Then he rose, and addressing Don Antonio in measured accents, said: "You have shed blood and committed murder. It shall therefore be done to you as you have done to others. G.o.d commanded it to be so."

Fabian drew his poignard from its sheath. The sun was shedding his first rays upon the scene, and every object cast a long shadow upon the ground.

A bright flash shot from the naked blade which the younger Mediana held in his hand.

Fabian buried its point in the sand.

The shadow of the poignard far exceeded its length.

"The sun," he said, "shall determine how many moments you have to live.

When the shadow disappears you shall appear before G.o.d, and my mother will be avenged."

A deathlike silence succeeded Fabian's last words, who, overcome with long suppressed emotions, fell, rather than seated himself upon the stone.

Bois-Rose and Pepe both retained their seats. The judges and the criminal were alike motionless.

Diaz perceived that all was over, but he did not wish, to take any part in the execution of the sentence.

He approached the Duke de Armada, knelt down before him, took his hand and raised it to his lips.