"Eh! eh! those brave beasts turn up at a lucky moment. For my part, I am worn out. I have been walking for many a long day over the prairie, and my legs are beginning to refuse to carry me."
"Come this way, we shall soon see them."
In fact, the hunters had not walked one hundred yards in the direction indicated by Brighteye, ere they found the horses quietly engaged in nibbling the pea vines and young tree shoots. The noble animals, on hearing a whistle, raised their intelligent heads, and hastened toward the hunters with a neigh of pleasure. According to the usual fashion in the prairies, they were saddled, but their bozal was hung round their necks. The hunters bridled them, leapt on their backs, and started again.
"Now that we have each a good horse between our legs we are certain of arriving in time," Marksman observed; "hence, it is useless to hurry on, and we can talk at our ease. Tell me, Brighteye, have you seen Don Miguel Ortega yet?"
"Never, I allow."
"Then you do not know him?"
"If I may believe Don José, he is a villain. For my own part, never having had any relations with him, I should be considerably troubled to form any opinion, bad or good, about him."
"With me it is different. I know him."
"Ah!"
"Very well indeed."
"For any length of time?"
"Long enough, I believe, at any rate to enable me to form an opinion about him."
"Ah! Well, what do you think of him?"
"Much good and much bad."
"Hang it? ah!"
"Why are you surprised? Are not all men in the same case?"
"Nearly so, I grant."
"This man is no worse or no better than the rest. This morning, as I foresaw that you were about to speak to me about him, I wished to leave you liberty of action by telling you that I was only slightly acquainted with him; but it is possible that your opinion will soon be greatly modified, and, perhaps, you will regret the support you have hitherto given Don José, as you call him."
"Would you like me to speak candidly, Marksman, now that no one, but He above, can hear us?"
"Do so, my friend. I should not be sorry to know your whole thoughts."
"I am certain that you know a great deal more about the story I told you last night than you pretend to do."
"Perhaps you are right; but what makes you think so?"
"Many things; and in the first place this."
"Go on."
"You are too sensible a man. You have acquired too great an experience of the things of this world, to undertake, without serious cause, the defence of a man who, according to the principles we profess on the prairie, you ought to regard, if not as an enemy, still as one of those men whom it is often disagreeable to come in contact, or have any relations with."
Marksman burst into a laugh. "There is truth in what you say, Brighteye," he at length remarked.
"Is there not?"
"I will not attempt to play at cunning with you; but I have powerful reasons for undertaking the defence of this man, but I cannot tell you them at this moment. It is a secret which does not belong to me, and of which I am only the depositary. I trust you will soon know all; but, till then, rely on my old friendship, and leave me to act in any way."
"Very good! At any rate, I am now beginning to see clearly, and, whatever may happen, you can reckon upon me."
"By Jove! I felt certain we should end by understanding one another; but, silence, and let nothing be seen. We are at the meeting place. Hang it! the Mexicans have not kept us waiting. They have already pitched their camp on the other side of the river."
In fact, a hunter's camp could be seen a short distance off, one side resting on the river, the other on the forest, and presenting perfectly fortified outworks, with the front turned to the prairies, and composed of bales and trees stoutly interlaced.
The two hunters made themselves known to the sentries, and entered without any difficulty. Don Miguel was absent; but the Gambusinos expected him at any moment. The hunters dismounted, hobbled their horses, and sat down quietly by the fire.
Don Stefano Cohecho had left the Gambusinos at daybreak, as he had announced on the previous evening.
CHAPTER X
FRESH CHARACTERS
In order to a right comprehension of ensuing facts, we will take advantage of our privilege as story tellers, to go back a fortnight, and allow the reader to be witness of a scene intimately connected with the most important events of this history, and which took place a few hundred miles from the spot where accident had collected our principal characters.
The Cordillera of the Andes, that immense spine of the American continent, the whole length of which it traverses under different names from north to south, forms, at various elevations, immense llanos, on which entire people live at a height at which all vegetation ceases in Europe.
After crossing the Presidio de Tubar, the advanced post of civilization on the extreme limit of the desert, and advancing into the mediano region of the tierra caliente for about one hundred and twenty miles, the traveller finds himself suddenly, and without any transition, in front of a virgin forest, which is no less than three hundred and twenty miles deep, by eighty odd miles wide.
The most practised pen is powerless to describe the marvels innumerable inclosed in that inexhaustible network of vegetation called a virgin forest, and the sight, at once strange and peculiar, majestic and imposing, which it offers to the dazzled sight. The most powerful imagination recoils before this prodigious fecundity of elementary nature, continually springing up again from its own destruction with a strength and vigour ever new. The creepers, which run from tree to tree, from branch to branch, plunge, at one moment, into the earth, and then rise once more to the sky, and form, by their interlacing and crossing, an almost insurmountable barrier, as if jealous nature wished to hide from profane eyes the mysterious secrets of these forests, beneath whose shade man's footsteps have only reached at long intervals, and never unpunished. Trees of every age and species grow without order or symmetry, as if sown by chance, like wheat in the furrows. Some, tall and slight, count only a few years; the extremities of their branches are covered by the tall and wide boughs of those whose haughty heads have seen centuries pass over them. Beneath their foliage softly murmur pure and limpid streams, which escape from the fissures of the rocks, and, after a thousand meanderings, are lost in some lake or unknown river, whose bright waters had never reflected aught in their clear mirror save the sublime secrets of the solitude. There may be found, pell-mell and in picturesque confusion, all the magnificent productions of tropical regions: The acajou; the ebony; the palisander; the stunted mahogany; the black oak; the cork; the maple; the mimosa, with its silvery foliage; and the tamarind, thrusting in every direction their branches, laden with, flowers, fruits, and leaves, which form a dome impenetrable to the sunbeams. From the vast and unexplored depths of these forests emerge, from time to time, inexplicable noises furious howls, feline miauls, mocking yells, mingled with shrill whistling or the joyous and harmonious song of the birds.
After plunging boldly into the centre of this chaos, and struggling hand to hand with this uncultivated and wild nature, the traveller succeeds, with axe in one hand and torch in the other, in gaining, inch by inch, step by step, a road impossible to describe. At one moment, by crawling like a reptile over the decaying leaves, dead wood, or guano, piled up for centuries; or by leaping from branch to branch, at the tops of the trees, standing, as it were, in the air. But woe to the man who neglects to have his eye constantly open to all that surrounds him, and his ear on the watch: for, in addition to the obstacles caused by nature, he has to fear the venomous stings of the serpents startled in their lairs, and the furious attacks of the wild beasts. He must also carefully watch the course of the rivers and streams he meets with, determine the position of the sun during the day, or guide himself at night by the Southern Cross; for, once astray in a virgin forest, it is impossible to get out of it it is a maze, from which no Ariadne's web would help to find the issue.
At last the traveller, after he has succeeded in surmounting the dangers we have describe, and a thousand others no less terrible, which we have passed over in silence, emerges on an immense plain, in the centre of which stands an Indian city. That is to say, he finds himself before one of those mysterious cities into which no European has yet penetrated, whose exact position even is unknown, and which, since the conquest, have served as an asylum for the last relics of Aztec civilization.
The fabulous accounts given by some travellers about the incalculable wealth buried in these cities, has inflamed the covetousness and avarice of a great number of adventurers, who, at various periods, have attempted to find the lost road to these queens of the Mexican prairies and savannahs. Others again, only impelled by the irresistible attraction extraordinary enterprises offer to vagabond imaginations, have also, especially during the last fifty years, set out in search of these Indian cities, though up to the present time success has never crowned these various expeditions. Some have returned disenchanted, and half killed by this journey toward the unknown; a considerable number have left their bodies at the foot of precipices or in the quebradas, to serve as food for birds of prey; while others, more unfortunate still, have disappeared without leaving a trace, and no one has ever heard what has become of them.
Owing to events, too long to narrate here, but which we shall describe some day, we have lived, against our will, in one of these impenetrable cities, though, more fortunate than our predecessors, whose whitened bones we saw scattered along the road, we succeeded in escaping from it, through dangers innumerable, all miraculously avoided. The description we are about to give, then, is scrupulously exact, and cannot be doubted, for we write from personal observation.
Quiepaa Tani, the city which presents itself to the traveller's sight after leaving the virgin forest, of which we have given a sketch, extends from east to west, and forms a parallelogram. A wide stream, over which several bridges of incredible lightness and elegance are thrown, runs through its entire length. At each corner of the square an enormous block of rock cut perpendicularly on the side that faces the plains, serves as an almost impregnable fortress; these four citadels are also connected by a wall twenty feet thick, and forty feet high, which, inside the city, forms a slope sixty feet wide at the base. This wall is built of native bricks, made of sandy earth and chopped straw; they are called adobes, and are about a yard long. A wide and deep fosse almost doubles the height of the walls. Two gates alone give access to the city. These gates are flanked by towers and pepper boxes, exactly like a mediaeval fortress; and, what adds to the correctness of our comparison, a small bridge, made of planks, extremely narrow and light, and so arranged as to be carried away on the slightest alarm, is the only communication between these gates and the exterior.
The houses are low, and terminate in terraces, connected with each other; they are slight, and built of wicker and canaverales covered with cement, in consequence of the earthquakes so frequent in these regions; but they are large, airy, and pierced with numerous windows. None of them are more than one story in height, and the fronts are covered with a varnish of dazzling whiteness.
This strange city, seen from a distance, as it rises in the midst of the tall prairie grass, offers the most singular and seductive sight.
On a fine evening in the month of October, five travellers, whose features or dress it would have been impossible to distinguish, owing to the obscurity, came out of the forest we have described above, stopped for a moment, with marked indecision, on the extreme edge of the wood, and began examining the ground. Before them rose a hillock, which, if no great height, yet cut the horizon at right angles.
After exchanging a few words, two of these persons remained where they were; the other three lay down on their faces, and, crawling on their hands and feet, advanced through the rank grass, which they caused to undulate, and which completely concealed their bodies. On reaching the top of the mound, which they had found such difficulty in scaling, they looked out into the country, and remained struck with astonishment and admiration.
The eminence, at the top of which they were, was perpendicular on the other side, like all the rest of the ground which extended on either side. A magnificent plain lay expanded a hundred feet below them, and in the centre of the plain, at a distance of about a thousand yards from them, stood, proud and imposing, Quiepaa Tani,2 the mysterious city, defended by its massive towers and thick walls. The sight of this vast city in the midst of the desert produced on the minds of the three men a feeling of stupor, which they could not explain, and which for a few moments rendered them dumb with surprise. At length one of them rose on his elbow, and addressed his comrades.
"Are my brothers satisfied?" he said, with a guttural accent, which, though he expressed himself in Spanish, proved him to be an Indian. "Has Addick (the Stag) kept his promise?"
"Addick is one of the first warriors of his tribe; his tongue is straight, and the blood flows clearly in his veins," one of the men he addressed, answered.
The Indian smiled silently, without replying; this smile would have given his companions much matter for thought, had they seen it.
"It seems to me," the one who had not yet spoken said, "that it is very late to enter the city."
"Tomorrow, at sunrise, Addick will lead the two Paleface maidens to Quiepaa Tani," the Indian answered; "the night is too dark."
"The warrior is right," the second speaker remarked, "we must put off the affair till tomorrow."
"Yes, let us return to our friends, whom a longer absence may alarm."
Joining deeds to words, the first speaker turned round, and, exactly following the track his body had left in the grass, he soon found himself, as well as his companions, who imitated all his movements, at the skirt of the forest, into which, after their departure, the two persons they left behind had returned.
The silence which reigns beneath these gloomy roofs of foliage and branches during the day, had been succeeded by the dull sounds of a wild concert, formed by the shrill cries of the night birds, which woke, and prepared to attack the loros, humming birds, and cardinals, belated far from their nests; the roaring of the cougars; the hypocritical miauling of the jaguars and panthers, and the snappish barks of the coyotes, which reechoed, with a mournful sound, from the roofs of the inaccessible caverns and gaping pits which served as lurking places for these dangerous guests.
Returning on the trail they had traced with their axes, the three men soon found themselves near a fire of dead wood, burning in the centre of a small clearing. Two women, or rather girls, were crouching, pensive and sad, by the fire. They counted scarce thirty years between them; they were lovely, and of that creole beauty which the divine pencil of a Raphael has been alone able to reproduce. But at this moment they were pale, seemed fatigued, and their faces reflected a gloomy sorrow; At the sound of the approaching steps they raised their eyes, and a flash of joy illumined their faces like a sunbeam.
The Indian threw some sticks on the fire, which was threatening to go out, while one of the hunters occupied himself with giving their provender to the horses, hobbled a short distance off.
"Well, Don Miguel," one of the ladies said, addressing the hunter who had taken a seat by her side, "shall we soon near the end of our journey?"