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Now that their leader is no more, there is no cause of quarrel between them and the warriors of the tribe, and not a hand is raised to avenge their young cacique. For on learning the full character of his designs, and his complicity with the cruel vaqueano, all acknowledge that both men have but met the death they deserved.
His gold has made them his friends and allies; in short, gained them over to him as good for anything he may call upon them to do. Aguara having signified assent, a gesture brings them up; and, at a whispered word from the vaqueano himself, they fall in behind him.
"About twenty miles," the vaqueano mutters to himself, with a glance, cast inquiringly ahead. "It can't be more than that to the river itself. Question is, whether I can make it anywheres near Assuncion. I'm not sure about this trail; evidently only a cattle run. It may lead me too much above or below.
There is no one in sight, however, save the vaqueano and his own followers; the latter behind, halted by command, some of them still in the water, so that they may not ride over the shod-tracks, and obliterate them. All this while Halberger and his child are within twenty paces of the spot, and seated in their saddles, as when they first drew up side by side.
Besides, what he is not aware of, she had overheard part of the speech which passed between him and the vaqueano, as the latter was entering the sumac grove, to do that deed which has left her without a father. Instead, therefore, of Aguara's words deceiving her into a false confidence, they but strengthen the feeling of repulsion she has all along had for him.
Not strange then the sadness overspreading her features, nor the weight of woe in her heart; as she dwells on the fate that may be his and theirs. For she knows they are all in danger great and certain danger; has known it ever since seeing Valdez, the vaqueano, consorting with the Tovas Indians, and on friendly terms with their chief.
This man, as one who knows him well informs us, is a grave and reserved Gaucho, who knows by heart the peculiarities of twenty thousand leagues of mountain, wood, and plain! He is the only map that an Argentinian general takes with him in a campaign; and the vaqueano is never absent from his side. No plan is formed without his concurrence.
Like his kinsman, the vaqueano, he is a personage well convinced of his own importance; grave, reserved, taciturn, whose word is law. Such a one was the famous Calébar, the dreaded thief-taker of the Pampas, the Vidocq of Buenos Ayres. This man during more than forty years exercised his profession in the Republic, and a few years since was living, at an advanced age, not far from Buenos Ayres.
If suddenly beset by seven or eight of these desert police, the Gaucho malo slashes right and left with his redoubted knife, kills one, maims another, wounds them all. Perhaps he reaches his horse and is off and away amid a shower of harmless balls; or he is taken; in which case, all that remains, the day after, of the Gaucho malo, is a lump of soulless clay. Then there is the guide, or vaqueano.
For before parting with him, Rufino Valdez had said what amounted to so much; and possibly by this time the Senora Halberger, with what remained of her family, would be on the way back to Paraguay; not returning voluntarily, but taken back by the vaqueano.
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