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"Not very likely," replied the trapper, whose first impression of the outlaw was evidently an unfavourable one. "Heaven I fancy had nothing to do with it. My comrade and I at about two leagues from here chanced upon a panther and two jaguars, quarrelling over the body of a dead horse." "I re was mine," interrupted Tiburcio. "Yours, young man!" continued the trapper, in a tone of rude cordiality.
Already the frogs were croaking in the marshes. A star shone in the sky. Tiburcio fixed his gaze upon it and began to pray in low tones. The silence was scarcely broken by the murmuring of the water as it ran and broke over the stones in the ravine not far away, just behind the cabin. Tiburcio sighed, arose, leaned against the jamb and lacked courage to go inside. Joanna came near the door.
The two Americans sauntered around for some distance, and on their return to the cabin found Tiburcio enjoying his siesta under a near-by pecan tree. Their horses refreshed and rested, they resaddled, crossing the stream, intending to return to the ranchito by evening.
Tiburcio leaped into the empty saddle, and the three galloped silently toward the place where the travellers had halted the servant thinking only of reaching it as soon as possible, and going to rest Cuchillo mentally cursing the interruption that had forced him to adjourn his project of vengeance and Tiburcio vainly endeavouring to drive out of his mind the suspicion which this curious incident had aroused.
This being consented to, he returned to the cabin, made the necessary change, and stood before them a picture of health, bewhiskered and bronzed like a pirate. As he was halfway to the vehicle, he turned back, and taking the old black hands of Tiburcio in his own, said in good Spanish, though there was a huskiness in his voice, "That lady is my mother. I may never see you again.
He, after wandering about the world for six or seven months, a modern Ulysses, found at last in the island of Luzon, hospitality, money, and a faded Calypso, his better half but alas! a bitter half. He was known as the unhappy Tiburcio Espadaña, and, although he was thirty-five years old and seemed even older, he was, however, younger than Doña Victorina, who was only thirty-two.
Tiburcio was well mounted, but, on account of his years, was timid about using a rope; and well he might be, for frequently we found ourselves in a humorous predicament, and sometimes in one so grave that hilarity was not even a remote possibility. The second morning of the hunt, Tiburcio and I singled out a big black bull about a mile from the river.
But now with the secret of the Golden Valley Tiburcio suddenly saw himself powerful and rich; hope had sprung up within his bosom; and amidst the reverie occasioned by these delightful thoughts, he at last fell asleep.
Gnashing his teeth, Tiburcio squeezed the fledglings and crushed them. Their tender bones cracked like bits of wood. The blood gushed forth and trickled, warm, through the tightened fingers of the man. Under the impulse of his fury he threw them to the ground; they flattened out, soft as rotten fruit. And the caboclo, growling to himself, trampled upon them.
"Ah yes! a meeting where Tiburcio says they shout and spit on the ground, your Reverence, and only one has a chair and him they call a 'chairman' because of it, and yet he sits not but shouts and spits even as the others and keeps up a tapping with a hammer like a very pico. And there it is they are ever 'resolving' that which is not, and consider it even as done."
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