"Well?" she asked, in a voice half choked by fear.
"In a few moments we shall be taken," the chief replied mournfully.
"What! have we no hope left?"
"None! We are surrounded on all sides."
"Oh, my Maker! What have I done?" the poor girl sobbed.
Curumilla reclined upon the ground; he had taken his weapons from his belt, and placed them beside him; and with the stoical fatalism of the Indian when he knows that he cannot escape a destiny that threatens him, he waited impassively, his arms crossed upon his breast, the arrival of the enemy. They heard the tramp of the horses drawing nearer and nearer. In a quarter of an hour all would be over.
"Let my sister prepare," Curumilla said coolly: "Antinahuel approaches."
"Poor man," said Rosario; "why did you endeavour to save me?"
"The young blue-eyed maiden is the friend of my pale brothers; I would lay down my life for her."
"You must not die, chief," she said, in her soft clear tones; "you shall not!"
"Why not? I do not dread torture; my sister shall see how a chief can die."
"Listen to me. You have heard the threats of that woman; my life is in no danger."
He replied by a gesture of assent.
"But," she continued, "if you remain with me, if you are taken, they will kill you."
"Yes," he remarked, coolly.
"Then who will inform my friends of my fate? If you die, chief, what can they do to deliver me?"
"That is true; they can do nothing."
"You must live, then, chief, for my sake."
"Does my sister wish it?"
"I insist upon it."
"Good!" said the Indian. "I will go, then; but let not my sister be cast down."
At this moment the noise of the approaching cavalcade resounded with a loudness that announced they were close at hand. The chief gathered up his arms, replaced them in his belt, and, after bestowing a last sign of encouragement upon Rosario, he glided among the high grass and disappeared. Antinahuel and the Linda were within ten paces of her.
"Here I am," she said, in a firm voice; "do with me what you please."
Her persecutors, struck with such an exhibition of courage, pulled up their horses in astonishment. The courageous girl had saved Curumilla.
CHAPTER IV.
SERPENT AND VIPER
Doña Rosario stood motionless, her arms crossed, her head haughtily raised, and her look disdainful. The Linda leaped from her horse, and seizing her by the arm, shook her violently.
"Oh, oh!" she said, in a bitterly mocking tone, "my pretty dear! This is the way you oblige people to come after you: is it?"
Doña Rosario only replied to this flood of words by a look of cold contempt.
"Ah!" the exasperated courtesan exclaimed, clutching her arm, "I will bring down that proud spirit!"
"Madam," Rosario replied, mildly, "you hurt me very much."
"Serpent!" the Linda shrieked, "why can I not crush you beneath my heel?"
Rosario staggered a few paces; her foot struck against a root, and she fell. In her fall her forehead came in contact with a sharp stone; she uttered a feeble cry of pain, and fainted. The Indian chief, at the sight of the large gash in the young girl's forehead, uttered a roar like that of a wild beast. He leant over her raised her tenderly, and endeavoured to stop the bleeding.
"Fie!" said the Linda, with a jeering laugh; "are you going to play the old woman you, the first chief of your nation?"
Antinahuel remained silent; for an instant he felt an inclination to stab the fury: he darted a glance at her so loaded with anger and hatred, that she was terrified, and instinctively made a movement as if to put herself on the defensive. As yet the attentions of Antinahuel had no effect; Rosario remained still senseless. In a few minutes the Linda was reassured by observing that love occupied more of the thoughts of the chief than hatred.
"Come, tie the creature upon a horse," she said.
"This woman belongs to me," Antinahuel replied, "and I alone have the right of disposing of her."
"Not yet, chief; a fair exchange: when you have delivered the general, I will give her up to you."
"My sister forgets," said Antinahuel, "that I have fifty mosotones with me."
"What does that signify?" she replied.
"It signifies," he replied, "that I am the stronger."
"Indeed!" she said, sneeringly, "is that the way you keep your promises?"
"I love this woman," he said, in a deep voice.
"Caray! I know that well enough," she replied.
"I will not have her suffer."
"See there, now," she cried, still jeering; "I give her up to you expressly that she may suffer."
"If such is my sisters thought, she is mistaken."
"Chief, my friend, you do not know what you are talking about; you are ignorant of the hearts of white women."
"I do not understand my sister."
"No; you do not comprehend that this woman will never love you that she will never entertain for you anything but contempt and disdain."
"Oh!" Antinahuel replied, "I am too great a chief to be thus despised by a woman."
"You will see you are, though; in the meantime I demand my prisoner."
"My sister shall not have her."
"Then try to take her from me!" she shrieked; and springing like a tiger cat, she pushed away the chief, and seized the young girl, to whose throat she applied her dagger so closely that blood stained the point.
Antinahuel uttered a terrible cry.
"Stop!" he shouted in consternation; "I consent to everything."
"Ah!" cried the Linda, with a smile of triumph, "I knew I should have the last word."
The chief bit his fingers with powerless rage but he was too well acquainted with this woman to continue a struggle which he knew must infallibly terminate in the maiden's death. By a prodigy of self command he forced his face to assume a smile, and said in a mild voice
"Wah! my sister is excited! Of what consequence is it to me whether this woman is mine now or in a few hours hence?"
"Yes, but only when General Bustamente is no longer in the hands of his enemies, Chief."
"Be it so!" he said, "since my sister requires it; let her act as she thinks fit."
"Very well; but my brother must prove his faith to me."
"What security can I give my sister, that will thoroughly satisfy her?" he said with a bitter smile.
"This," she replied, with a sneer; "let my brother swear by the bones of his ancestors that he will not oppose anything it shall please me to do, till the general is free."
The chief hesitated; the oath the Linda requested him to take was one held sacred by the Indians, and they dreaded breaking it in the highest degree; such is their respect for the ashes of their fathers. But Antinahuel had fallen into a snare, from which it was impossible for him to extricate himself.
"Good!" he said, smiling; "let my sister be satisfied. I swear upon the bones of my father that I will not oppose her in anything she may please to do."
"Thank you," the Linda answered; "my brother is a great warrior."
Antinahuel had no other plausible pretext for remaining: he slowly, and, as if regretfully, rejoined his mosotones, got into his saddle, and set off, darting at the Linda a last glance, that would have congealed her with fear if she had seen it.
"Poor puling creature!" she said. "Don Tadeo, it is you I wound in torturing your leman! Shall I at length force you to restore to me my daughter?"
The Indian peons attached to her service had remained with her. In the heat of the pursuit the horses, abandoned by Curumilla and brought back by the scouts, had remained with the troop.
"Bring hither one of those horses!" she commanded.
The courtesan had the poor girl placed across one of the horses, with her face towards the sky; then she ordered that the feet and hands of her victim should be brought under the belly of the animal and solidly fastened with cords by the ankles and wrists.
"The woman is not firm upon her legs," she said, with a dry, nervous laugh.
The poor girl gave scarcely any signs of life; her countenance had an earthy, cadaverous hue, and the blood flowed copiously. Her body, horribly cramped by the frightful posture in which she was tied, had nervous starts, and dreadfully hurt her wrists and ankles, into which the cords began to enter. A hollow rattle escaped from her oppressed chest.
CHAPTER V.
AN INDIAN'S LOVE
The Linda rejoined Antinahuel, who, knowing what torture she was preparing to inflict on the young girl, had stopped at a short distance from the spot where he had left her.
When they reached the toldería, the horsemen dismounted and the maiden was untied and transported, half dead, into the same cuarto where, an hour before, she had, for the first time, found herself in the presence of the courtesan.
The appearance of Rosario was really frightful, and would have excited pity in anybody but the tigress whose delight it was to treat her so cruelly. Her long hair hung in loose disorder upon her half-naked shoulders, and at various spots adhered to her face through the blood which had flowed from her wound; her face, soiled with blood and dirt, wore a greenish cast, and her half-closed lips showed that her teeth were tightly clenched. Her wrists and ankles, to which still hung strips of the thick cord by which she had been fastened to the horse, were frightfully bruised and discoloured. Her delicate frame was convulsed with nervous quiverings, and her faint breathing painfully issued from her heaving chest.
"Poor girl!" the chief murmured.
"Why, chief!" said the Linda, with a sardonic smile. "I scarcely know you! Good Heavens! how love can change a man! What, you, intrepid warrior, pity the fate of this poor maudlin chit! I really believe you will weep over her like a woman, next!"
"Yes," the chief said; "my sister speaks truly, I scarcely know myself! Oh!" he added, bitterly, "is it possible that I, Antinahuel, to whom the Huincas have done so much wrong, can be so? This woman is of an accursed race; she is in my power, I could avenge myself upon her, satisfy the hatred that devours me, make her endure the must atrocious injuries! and, I dare not! no, I dare not!"
"Does my brother, then, love this woman so much?" the Linda asked, in a soft, insinuating tone.
Antinahuel looked at her as if she had awakened him suddenly from his sleep; he fixed his dull eyes upon her, and exclaimed
"Do I love her? love her! let my sister listen. Before dying, and going to hunt in the blessed prairies with the just warriors, my father called me to him, and placing his mouth to my ear 'My son, he said, thou art the last of our race; Don Tadeo de León is also the last of his; since the coming of the palefaces, the family of that man has been always fatally opposed to ours, everywhere and under all circumstances. Swear to kill that man whom it has never been in my power to reach!' I swore to do it. Good!' he said, Pillian loves children who obey their father; let my son mount his best horse, and go in search of his enemy. Then, with a sigh, my father bade me depart. Without replying, I saddled, as he had commanded me, my best horse, and went to the city called Santiago, resolved to kill my enemy."
"Well?" the Linda asked, seeing him stop short.
"Well!" he resumed, "I saw this woman, and my enemy still lives." The Linda cast upon him a look of disdain; but Antinahuel did not remark it he continued
"One day this woman found me dying, pierced with wounds; she made her peons bear me to a stone toldo, where for three months she watched over me, driving back the death which had hung over me."
"And when my brother was cured?" the Linda asked eagerly.
"When I was cured," he resumed, passionately, "I fled away like a wounded tiger, bearing in my heart an incurable wound! Two suns ago, when I was quitting my toldería, my mother, whom I loved and venerated, wished to oppose my departure; she knew that it was love that attracted me from her, that it was to see this woman I left her. Well, my mother "
"Your mother?" the courtesan said, breathlessly.
"As she persisted in not allowing me to depart, I trampled her, without pity, beneath the hoofs of my horse!" he cried, in almost a shriek.
"Oh!" exclaimed the Linda, recoiling.
"Yes! it is horrible, is it not, to kill one's mother? Now!" he added, with a frightful mocking laugh, "will my sister ask again if I love this woman? For her sake, to see her, to hear her address to me one of those sweet words which she used to speak near me, or only to see her smile, I would joyfully sacrifice the most sacred interests. I would wade through the blood of my dearest friends nothing should stop me!"
The Linda, as she listened to him and observed him, reflected deeply, and as soon as he ceased she said
"I see that my brother really loves this woman. I was deceived, I must repair my fault."
"What does my sister mean?"
"I mean, that if I had known, I should not have inflicted so severe a chastisement."
"Poor girl!" he sighed.
The Linda smiled ironically to herself. "But my brother does not know what palefaced women are," she continued; "they are vipers, which you endeavour in vain to crush, and which always rise up again to sting the heel of him who places his foot upon them. It is of no use to argue with passion, were it not so I would say to my brother, 'Be thankful to me, for in killing this woman I preserve you from atrocious sorrow.'"
Antinahuel moved uneasily.
"But," she continued, "my brother loves, and I will restore this woman to him; within an hour I will give her up to him."
"Oh! if my sister does that," Antinahuel exclaimed, intoxicated with joy, "I will be her slave!"
Doña Maria smiled with an undefinable expression.
"I will do it," she said, "but time presses, we cannot stay here any longer my brother doubtless forgets."
Antinahuel darted a suspicious glance at her.
"I forget nothing," he replied; "the friend of my sister shall be released."
"Good! my brother will succeed."
"Still, I will not depart till the blue-eyed maiden has recovered her senses."
"Let my brother hasten to give orders for our departure in ten minutes."
"It is good!" said Antinahuel; "in ten minutes I shall be here."
He left the cuarto with a hasty step. As soon as he was gone, the Linda knelt down by the young girl, removed the cords that still cut her flesh, washed her face with cold water, fastened up her hair, and carefully bandaged the wound on her forehead.
"Oh!" she thought, "through this woman I hold you, demon!"
She softly raised the maiden, placed her in a high-backed chair, remedied, as well as she was able, the disorder in her dress, and then applied a phial of powerful salts to her nostrils.
These salts were not long in producing their effect; she breathed a deep sigh, and opened her eyes, casting round vague and languid looks. But suddenly her eye fell upon the woman who was lavishing her cares upon her; a fresh pallor covered the features, which had begun to be slightly tinged with red, she closed her eyes, and was on the point of fainting again. The Linda shrugged her shoulders, took a second phial from her bosom, and opening the poor girls mouth introduced a few drops of cordial between her livid lips. At that moment Antinahuel returned.
"Everything is ready," he said; "we can depart immediately."
"When you please," Doña Maria replied.
"What is to be done with this girl?"
"She will remain here: I have arranged everything."
"Let us be gone, then!" and turning towards Rosario, she said, with a malignant smile. "Farewell, till we meet again, señorita!"