The Insurgent Chief

"Here are your animals."

"Then we shall be ready in a few minutes. If you like, while we are loading, inform the men who are to accompany you."

"They have been told; they are waiting for us in the intrenchments."

Tyro and the gauchos then proceeded, aided by Emile and Don Santiago, to load the two mules and to saddle the horses.

The Frenchman, accustomed to travel in these countries, had very little luggage; he never carried with him anything but what was indispensable.

Half an hour afterwards the caravan started out at a gentle pace, accompanied by Don Santiago, who followed it on foot, smoking his cigarette, and talking with the young man in a friendly way.

As the Montonero had said, a dozen horsemen were waiting at the intrenchments.

The Pincheyra mounted his horse, gave the order of departure; the keepers opened the barriers, and the little troop quitted the camp in good order.

CHAPTER IX

IN THE MOUNTAIN

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when Emile Gagnepain left the camp. Notwithstanding the rather suspicious escort by which he was accompanied, it was with a sigh of satisfaction that the young man at last saw himself clear of this repair of bandits, from which at one time he feared he should never again set out.

The route which the little caravan followed was most picturesque and varied. A narrow path wound on the side of the mountains, almost always close to unfathomable precipices, from the base of which arose mysterious murmurs produced by invisible waters. Sometimes a bridge formed by two trunks of trees thrown across a chasm, which suddenly interrupted the route, was crossed, as if in play, by horses and mules for a long time accustomed to walk over routes more perilous still.

Obliged to travel one behind the other, owing to the narrowness of the scarcely traced path which they were pursuing, the travellers could not talk to each other; it was scarcely possible for them to exchange a few words, and they were constrained to abandon themselves to their own thoughts, or to charm the weariness of the journey by singing or whistling. It was in thus examining the abrupt and wild landscape by which he was surrounded that the young man formed a good idea of the formidable and almost impregnable position chosen by the partisan for his headquarters, and the great influence that this position must give him over the dismayed inhabitants of the plain. He shuddered as he thought of the imprudence he had committed in allowing himself to be taken to this fortress which, like the infernal circles of Dante, was by nature surrounded by impassable intrenchments, and which never gave up the prey that had once been drawn into it. A crowd of melancholy stories of young girls, who had been carried away and had disappeared, recurred to his mind, and, by a strange reaction of thought, he experienced a kind of retrospective turn – if we may be allowed the expression – in thinking of the terrible dangers that he had run in the midst of these lawless bandits, by whom, in many instances, the law of nations – sacred among all civilised peoples – had not been respected.

Then, from reflection to reflection – by a very natural gradation – his mind fixed itself on the ladies whom he had left without support or protection in the midst of these men. Although he had only left them with the design of attempting a last effort for their deliverance, his conscience reproached him for having abandoned them; for, notwithstanding the absolute impossibility of his being useful to them at Casa-Frama, he was convinced that his presence was a check upon the Pincheyras, and that before him none of them would have dared to have subjected the captives to any brutal act.

A prey to these painful thoughts, he felt his spirits sadden by degrees, and the joy that he had at first experienced on seeing himself so unexpectedly at liberty gave place to the despondency which several times already had seized on him, and had destroyed his energy.

He was drawn from these reflections by the voice of Don Santiago, which suddenly fell upon his ear.

The young man quickly raised his head, and looked round him like a man suddenly awakened.

The landscape had completely changed. The path had by degrees become broader, and had assumed the appearance of a regular route; the mountains were lower; their sides were now covered with verdant forests, the leafy summits of which were tinted with all the colours of the rainbow by the mild rays of the setting sun. The caravan emerged at this moment into a rather extensive plain, surrounded by thick shrubbery and traversed by a narrow stream, the capricious meanderings of which were lost here and there in the midst of high and thick grass.

"What do you want?" asked the Frenchman, who, susceptible like all artists, had become absorbed, unknown to himself, by the influence of this majestic landscape, and felt gaiety replace the sadness which had for a long time oppressed him; "What do you want now, Don Santiago?"

"The devil!" exclaimed the latter; "It is fortunate that you have at last consented to answer me. For more than quarter of an hour I have been speaking to you without getting a word out of you. It seems as if you had been sound asleep, companion."

"Pardon me, Señor, I was not asleep; I was reflecting, which is often much about the same."

"¡Demonio! I will not quibble about that; but as you now consent to listen to me, will you be so good as to answer me?"

"I am quite agreeable; but that I may do so, it will be necessary, my dear Don Santiago, to repeat your question, of which I assure you I have not heard a word."

"I will do so, although, without exaggeration, I have done so at least ten times to no purpose."

"I have already begged you to excuse me."

"I know it, and I therefore will not be offended at your inattention. This is what I have to say: it is at least six o'clock; the sun is setting amidst coppery clouds of the worst kind; I fear a storm tonight."

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed the young man; "Are you sure of that?"

"I have too much acquaintance with these mountains to be deceived."

"Hum! And what do you intend to do?"

"That is what I ask; that concerns you at least as much as me, I suppose."

"Just so – even more, since it is for my sake that you have agreed to accompany me. Well, what is your advice. I will at once adopt the expedients that your experience may suggest, and accept them without question."

"That is what I call speaking, and your answer is none the worse for making me wait for it. My advice, then would be to stop here, where we can – unless there is a deluge impossible to foresee – place ourselves under shelter from the hurricane, and camp for the night. What do you think of it?"

"I think that you are right, and that it would be folly, under circumstances like those, considering the advanced hour – especially the charming spot where we are – to persist in going further."

"Especially as it would be almost impossible for us to reach as good a refuge as this, before it is quite dark."

"Let us stop, then, without further discussion, and let us hasten to make our encampment."

"Well, dear Señor, as it is to be so, alight and let us unload the mules."

"Very good," said the young man, leaping from his horse – a movement immediately imitated by the Pincheyra.

Don Santiago had spoken truly. The sun was setting, drowned in waves of dull clouds; the evening breeze was rising with some force; the birds wheeled in large circles, uttering discordant cries – everything, in fact, foretold one of those terrible hurricanes called temporales, the violence of which is so great that the country over which they wreak their vengeance is in a few minutes completely changed and thrown into disorder, as if an earthquake had shattered it.

The painter had several times, since his arrival in America, been in a position to witness the terrifying spectacle of these frightful convulsions of nature in labour. Knowing the inconvenience of the danger then, he hastened to prepare everything, so that the tempest might do as little damage as possible. The baggage piled together in the centre of the valley, not far from the stream, formed a solid rampart against the greatest fury of the wind; the horses were left free and abandoned to that infallible instinct with which Providence has endowed them, and which in giving them a foreknowledge of the danger, suggests to them the means of escaping from it. Then, in a hole dug in haste, they lit the fire for cooking the slices of charqui, or wild bull's flesh dried in the sun, destined, with the harina tostada and a little queso of goat's flesh, for the evening meal. The water from the brook served to satisfy the thirst of the travellers, for, except Don Santiago and the painter, who were each provided with a large bota of white brandy, they did not carry with them either wine or liqueurs; but this forgetfulness, if it really was such, was of little importance for men of such great frugality as the Hispano-Americans – people who live, so to speak, on nothing, and whose hunger or thirst is appeased by the first thing which offers itself.

The meal was what it should be among men who expect from one moment to another to see a terrible and inevitable danger fall upon them – that is to say, sorrowful and silent. Each ate in haste, without holding conversation with his neighbour; then, hunger satisfied and the cigarette lighted, the travellers, without even wishing good night to each other, enveloped themselves in their frazadas and their pellones, and tried to sleep with that placid resignation which forms the foundation of the character of the Creoles, and makes them accept without useless murmurs the frequently disastrous consequences of the nomadic life to which they are condemned.

Soon, with the exception of the three or four sentinels placed on the outskirts of the encampment, in order to guard against the approach of wild beasts, and the two chiefs of the caravan – that is to say, Don Santiago and Emile – all were plunged into deep sleep.

The Pincheyra appeared thoughtful; he smoked his cigarette, his back leaning on a trunk of a tree, and his eyes directed straight forward, without looking on any object. The Frenchman, on the contrary, more wakeful and more gay than ever, was humming a tune and amusing himself by digging with the point of a knife a hole in which he piled some dry wood, evidently intending to light a watch fire to warm his feet, when he felt inclined to go to sleep.

"Eh! Don Santiago," said he at last, addressing Pincheyra, and touching him lightly on the shoulder, "what are you thinking of now? Is it that you are not going to try and sleep for a couple of hours?"

The Chilian shook his head without answering.

"What does it matter?" pursued the young man persistently – "You, who a little while ago reproached me for my melancholy – you seem to have inherited it, upon my word. Is it the weight of the atmosphere that influences you?"

"Do you take me for a woman?" answered he at last, in a surly tone; "What matters to me the state of the sky? Am I not a child of the mountains, accustomed from my infancy to brave the most terrible storms?"

"But, then, what is it that distresses you?"

"What is it? Do you wish to know?"

"Pardieu! Since I ask it."

Don Santiago shook his head, threw around him a suspicious look, and then at last made up his mind to speak in a low and almost indistinct voice, as if he feared to be heard, although all his companions were asleep at too great a distance for the sound of his voice to reach them.