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Updated: May 9, 2025
The first, as can be seen at a glance, is the pursuing party of Tovas youths led by Aguara; while the sun shining upon gilt buttons, with the glittering of lance blades and barrels of guns, tells the other to be a troop of soldiers, beyond doubt the looked for cuarteleros!
And what has now occurred seems to coincide with that all except the supposed treachery of Naraguana. A good judge of character, as most gauchos are, Gaspar cannot think of the aged cacique having turned traitor. Still, as Ludwig, he is at a loss what to think. For why should the Tovas chief have made that abrupt departure from his late abiding place?
The Prussian naturalist chanced to be passing at the time; and seeing the Indian, an aged man, thus insulted, took pity upon and rescued him from his tormentors. Recovering from his debauch, and conscious of the service the stranger had done him, the Tovas chief swore eternal friendship to his generous protector, at the same time proffering him the "freedom of the Chaco."
No grand city, as might be supposed from such a high-sounding name, but simply a collection of palm and bamboo toldos, or huts, scattered about without any design or order; each owner having been left free to select the site of his frail tenement, since among the Tovas municipal regulations are of the simplest and most primitive character.
For although themselves individually free, the Tovas Indians do not believe in the doctrine that all men should be so; or, at all events, they do not act up to it. Instead, their practice is the very opposite, as shown by their keeping numbers of slaves. Of these they have hundreds, most of them being Indians of other tribes, their enemies, whom they have made captive in battle.
To solve the seeming enigma of Rufino Valdez travelling in the company of the Tovas Indians, and on friendly terms with their young chief for he is so it will be necessary to turn back upon time, and give some further account of the vaqueano himself, and his villainous master; as also to tell why Naraguana and his people abandoned their old place of abode, with other events and circumstances succeeding.
The first, his fear of the Chaco savages, instinctive to every Paraguayan; the second, his want of faith, shared by Francia himself, that Halberger had fled thither. Neither could for a moment think of a white man seeking asylum in the Gran Chaco; for neither knew of the friendship existing between the hunter-naturalist and the Tovas chief.
Many the tale has she heard whispered in her ear, from the cradle upwards, telling of the weird power of this wicked despot, and the remorseless manner in which he has often wielded it. Even after their escape into the chaco, where, under the protection of the Tovas chief, they might laugh his enmity to scorn, she has never felt the confidence of complete security.
Their description, as given by these Indians who were not Tovas, but of a kindred tribe so exactly answered to the hunter-naturalist and his family, that Valdez had no doubt of its being they. And hastily returning to Paraguay, he communicated what he had been told to the man for whom he was acting.
To him all Indians seem treacherous Tovas Indians more than any for before his mental vision he has ever the image of Aguara, and can think of none other. As for the gaucho, though formerly one of Naraguana's truest friends, from what has happened, his faith in the integrity of the old Tovas chief is greatly shaken.
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