Don Ramón continued to gallop on. His son had not addressed a single prayer to him, or uttered a single complaint.
At length, towards eight o'clock, the horsemen stopped. This feverish ride had lasted ten hours. The horse panted and throbbed, and staggered at every step.
Don Ramón cast an anxious glance around him; a smile of satisfaction curled his lip. On all sides the desert displayed its immense plains of sand; on one alone the skirt of a virgin forest cut the horizon with its strange profile, breaking in a sinister manner the monotony of the prospect.
Don Ramón dismounted, placed his son upon the sand, took the bridle from his horse, that it might eat the provender he gave it; then, after having acquitted himself of all these duties, with the greatest coolness he approached his son, and removed the bandage from his eyes.
The boy remained silent, fixing upon his father a dull, cold look.
"Sir!" Don Ramón said, in a sharp, dry tone, "you are here more than twenty leagues from my hacienda, in which you will never set your foot again under pain of death; from this moment you are alone, you have no longer either father, mother, or family; as you have proved yourself almost a wild beast, I condemn you to live with wild beasts; my resolution is irrevocable, your prayers could not change it. Spare them then!"
"I shall not pray to you," the boy replied, "people do not intreat an executioner!"
Don Ramón started; he walked about in feverish agitation; but soon recovering himself, he continued,
"In this pouch are provisions for two days. I leave you this rifle, which in my hands never missed its mark; I give you also these pistols, this machete, and this knife, this hatchet, and powder and balls in these buffalo horns. You will find with the provisions a steel and everything necessary for kindling a fire. I add to these things a Bible, belonging to your mother. You are dead to society, into which you can never return; the desert is before you; it belongs to you; for me, I have no longer a son, adieu! The Lord be merciful to you, all is ended between us on earth; you are left alone, and without a family; it depends upon yourself, then, to commence a second existence, and to provide for your own wants. Providence never abandons those who place their confidence in it; henceforward, it alone will watch over you."
After having pronounced these words, Don Ramón, his countenance still impassible, replaced the bridle on his horse, restored his son to liberty by cutting the cords which bound him, and then getting into his saddle, he set off at his horse best speed.
Rafaël rose upon his knees, bent his head forward, listened with anxiety to the retreating gallop of the horse on the sand, followed with his eyes, as long as he was able, the fatal profile which was thrown in black relief by the moonbeams; and when the horseman was at length confounded with the darkness, the boy placed his hand upon his breast, and an expression of despair impossible to be described convulsed his features.
"My mother! my mother!" he cried.
He fell lifeless upon the sand. He had fainted.
After a long gallop, Don Ramón, insensibly and as if in spite of himself, slackened the speed of his horse, lending a keen ear to the vague noises of the desert, listening with anxiety, without rendering an account to himself why he did so, but expecting, perhaps, an appeal from his unfortunate son to return to him. Twice even his hand mechanically pulled the bridle as if he obeyed a secret voice which commanded him to retrace his steps; but the fierce pride of his race was still the stronger, and he continued his course homewards.
The sun was rising at the moment Don Ramón arrived at the hacienda.
Two persons were standing side by side at the gate, waiting his return.
The one was Doña Jesuita, the other the major-domo.
At sight of his wife, pale, mute, and motionless before him, like the statue of desolation, the hacendero felt an unutterable sadness weigh upon his heart; he wished to pass, but Doña Jesuita, making two steps towards him and seizing the bridle of his horse, said with agonized emotion,
"Don Ramón, what have you done with my son?"
The hacendero made no reply; on beholding the grief of his wife, remorse shot a pang into his heart, and he asked himself mentally if he had really the right to act as he had done.
Doña Jesuita waited in vain for an answer. Don Ramón looked earnestly at his wife; he was terrified at perceiving the indelible furrows which grief had imprinted upon that countenance, so calm, so placid, but a few hours before.
The noble woman was livid; her contracted features had an inexpressible rigidity; her eyes, burnt with fever, were red and dry, two black and deep lines rendered them hollow and haggard; a large stain marbled each of her cheeks, the trace of tears the source of which was dried up; she could weep no more, her voice was hoarse and broken, and her oppressed breast heaved painfully to allow the escape of a panting respiration.
After having waited some minutes for a reply to her question, "Don Ramón," she repeated, "what have you done with my son?"
The hacendero turned away his head with something like confusion.
"Oh! you have killed him!" she said, with a piercing shriek.
"No;" Don Ramón replied, terrified at her grief, and for the first time in his life forced to acknowledge the power of the mother who demands an account of her child.
"What have you done with him?" she screamed persistently.
"Presently, when you are more calm, you shall know all."
"I am calm," she replied, "why should you feign a pity you do not feel? My son is dead, and it is you who have killed him!"
Don Ramón alighted from his horse.
"Jesuita," he said to his wife, taking her hands and looking at her with tenderness, "I swear to you by all that is most sacred in the world, that your son exists; I have not touched a hair of his head."
The poor mother remained pensive for a few seconds.
"I believe you," she said; then after a pause she added, "What is become of him?"
"Well!" he replied, with some hesitation, "since you insist upon knowing all, learn that I have abandoned your son in the desert, but have left him the means to provide for his safety and his wants."
Doña Jesuita started, a nervous shudder crept through the whole of her frame.
"You have been very clement," she said in a cutting tone, and with bitter irony; "you have been very clement towards a boy of sixteen, Don Ramón; you felt a repugnance to bathe your hands in his blood, and you have preferred leaving that task to the wild beasts and ferocious Indians who alone people those solitudes."
"He was guilty!" the hacendero replied, in a low but firm voice.
"A child is never guilty in the eyes of her who has borne him in her bosom, and nourished him with her milk," she said with energy. "It is well, Don Ramón, you have condemned your son, I I will save him!"
"What would you do?" the hacendero said, terrified at the resolution he saw kindled in the eyes of his wife.
"What matters it to you? Don Ramón, I will accomplish my duty as you believe you have accomplished yours! God will judge between us! Tremble, lest He should one day demand of you an account of the blood of your son!"
Don Ramón bent his head beneath this anathema; with a pale brow, and a mind oppressed by heavy remorse, he went slowly into the hacienda.
Doña Jesuita looked after him for an instant.
"Oh!" she cried, "may God grant that I may arrive in time!"
She then went out from the portico, followed by Nô Eusebio.
Two horses awaited them, concealed behind a clump of trees. They mounted immediately.
"Where are we going, señora?" the major-domo asked.
"Where are we going, señora?" the major-domo asked.
"In search of my son!" she replied in a shrill voice.
She seemed transfigured by hope; a bright colour flushed her cheeks; her black eyes darted lightning.
Nô Eusebio untied four magnificent bloodhounds, called rastreros in the country, and which were kept to follow trails; he made them smell a shirt belonging to Rafaël; the hounds rushed forward on the scent, baying loudly. Nô Eusebio and Doña Jesuita galloped after them, exchanging a look of sanguine hope.
The dogs had no trouble in following the scent, it was straight and without obstruction, therefore they did not stop an instant.
When Doña Jesuita arrived at the spot where Rafaël had been abandoned by his father, the place was void! the boy had disappeared!
The traces of his having sojourned there were visible; a fire was not yet burnt out; everything indicated that Rafaël could not have quitted that place more than an hour.
"What is to be done?" Nô Eusebio asked anxiously.
"Push forward!" Doña Jesuita replied resolutely, urging her horse again into action, and the generous steed responding with unflagging spirit.
Nô Eusebio followed her.
On the evening of that day the greatest consternation prevailed at the Hacienda del Milagro, Doña Jesuita and Nô Eusebio had not returned.
Don Ramón ordered all the household to mount on horseback.
Provided with torches, the peons and vaqueros commenced a battue of an immense extent in search of their mistress and the major-domo.
The whole night passed away without bringing the least satisfactory result.
At daybreak, the horse of Doña Jesuita was found half devoured in the desert. Its trappings were wanting.
The ground round the carcass of the horse appeared to have been the scene of a desperate conflict of some kind.
Don Ramón, in despair, gave orders for return.
"Great Heaven!" he cried, as he re-entered the hacienda, "is it possible that my chastisement has already commenced?"
Weeks, months, years passed away, without any circumstance, lifting the corner of the mysterious veil which enveloped these sinister events, and, notwithstanding the most active and persevering researches, nothing could be learnt of the fate of Rafaël, his mother, and Nô Eusebio.
THE END OF THE PROLOGUEPART I.
THE LOYAL HEART
CHAPTER I.
THE PRAIRIE
To the westward of the United States extends, many hundred miles beyond the Mississippi, an immense territory, unknown up to this day, composed of uncultivated lands, on which stands neither the log house of the white man nor the hatto of the Indian.
This vast desert, intersected by dark forests, with mysterious paths traced by the steps of wild beasts, and by verdant prairies with high and tufted herbage that undulates with the slightest breeze, is watered by powerful streams, of which the principal are the great Canadian river, the Arkansas, and the Red River.
Over these plains, endowed with so rich a vegetation, wander innumerable troops of wild horses, buffaloes, elks, bighorns, and those thousands of animals which the civilization of the other parts of America is every day driving back, and which regain their primitive liberty in these regions.
On this account, the most powerful Indian tribes have established their hunting grounds in this country.
The Delawares, the Creeks, and the Osages, prowl along the frontiers of the desert up to the environs of the establishments of the Americans, with whom some few bonds of civilization are beginning to unite them, engaged in constant conflict with the hordes of Pawnees, Blackfeet, Assiniboins, and Comanches, indomitable races, nomads of the prairies, or inhabitants of the mountains, who permeate in all directions this desert, the proprietorship of which none of them venture to assert, but which they appear to agree to devastate, uniting in vast numbers for hunting parties, as if for the purpose of making war.
In fact, the enemies travellers are exposed to encounter in these deserts are of all kinds; without mentioning in this place wild beasts, there are hunters, trappers, and partisans, who are not less formidable to the Indians than to their fellow countrymen.
The prairie, therefore, the sinister theatre of incessant and terrible contests, is nothing in reality but a vast charnel house, in which perish obscurely, every year, in a merciless war of ambuscades, tens of thousands of intrepid men.
Nothing can be more grand or more majestic than the aspect of these prairies, into which Providence has bounteously bestowed such innumerable riches, nothing, more seductive than these green fields, these thick forests, these large rivers; the melancholy murmur of the waters rippling over the stones of the shallow stream, the songs of thousands of birds concealed under the foliage, the bounding of animals sporting amidst the high grass: everything enchants, everything attracts, and draws aside the fascinated traveller, who soon, the victim of his enthusiasm, will fall into one of those numberless snares laid under his feet among the flowers, and will pay with his life for his imprudent credulity.
Towards the end of the year 1837, in the latter days of the month of September, by the Indians called the moon of the falling leaves a man, still young, and who, from his complexion, notwithstanding his costume was entirely like that of the Indians, it was easy to perceive was a white man, was seated, about an hour before sunset, near a fire, the want of which began to be felt at this period of the year, at one of the most unfrequented spots of the prairie we have just described.
This man was at most thirty-five to thirty-six years old, though a few deeply marked wrinkles on his broad white forehead seemed to indicate a more advanced age.
His features were handsome and noble, and impressed with that pride and energy which a savage life imparts. His black eyes, starting from his head, and crowned with thick eye-brows, had a mild and melancholy expression, that tempered their brilliancy and vivacity; the lower part of his face disappeared beneath a long, thick beard, the bluish tint of which contrasted with the peculiar paleness spread over his countenance.
He was tall, slender, and perfectly well proportioned; his nervous limbs, upon which rose muscles of extreme rigidity, proved that he was endowed with more than common strength. In short, the whole of his person inspired that respectful sympathy which superior natures attract more easily in these countries than in ours, where physical strength is nearly always the attribute of the brute.
His remarkably simple attire was composed of a mitasse, or a kind of close drawers falling down to his ankles, and fastened to his hips by a leather belt, and of a cotton hunting shirt, embroidered with ornaments in wool of different colours, which descended to his midleg. This blouse, open in front, left exposed his embrowned chest, upon which hung a scapulary of velvet, from a slight steel chain. Short boots of untanned deerskin protected him from the bites of reptiles, and rose to his knees. A cap made of the skin of a beaver, whose tail hung down behind, covered his head, while long and luxuriant curls of black hair, which were beginning to be threaded with white, fell beneath it over his broad shoulder. This man was a hunter.
A magnificent rifle laid within reach of his hand, the game bag which was hung to his shoulder belt and the two buffalo horns, suspended at his girdle, and filled with powder and balls, left no doubt in this respect. Two long double pistols were carelessly thrown near his rifle.
The hunter, armed with that long knife called a machete, or a short-bladed straight sabre, which the inhabitants of the prairies never lay aside, was occupied in conscientiously skinning a beaver, whilst carefully watching the haunch of a deer which was roasting at the fire, suspended by a string, and listening to the slightest noises that arose in the prairies.