The Pirates of the Prairies: Adventures in the American Desert

by Gustave Aimard

  CHAPTER XXI.

  THE AVENGER.

  In order fully to comprehend the ensuing facts, we are constrained torelate here an event which occurred about twenty years before our storycommences.

  At that remote period Texas belonged, if not _de facto_, still _dejure_, to Mexico. Marvellously situated on the Mexican Gulf, endowedwith a temperate climate and a fertile soil, which, if tickled with aspade, laughs with a harvest, Texas is assuredly one of the richestcountries in the New World. Hence, the Government, foreseeing the futureof this province, did all in its power to populate it.

  Unfortunately, it effected very little, incapable as it was ofpopulating even Mexico. Still, a considerable number of Mexicans wentacross and settled in Texas.

  Among the men who let themselves be tempted by the magic promises ofthis virgin soil were two brothers, Don Stefano and Don Pacheco deIrala, of the best families in the province of Nuevo-Leon. The activepart they played in the war of independence had ruined them, and notobtaining from the liberals, after the triumph of their cause, thereward they had a right to expect for the services they hadrendered--Don Gregorio, their father, having even paid with his life forhis attachment to the party--they had no other resource but settling inTexas, a new country, in which they had hopes of speedilyre-establishing their fortunes.

  Owing to their thorough knowledge of agriculture, and theirintelligence, they soon gave a considerable extension to theirsettlement, which they had the pleasure of seeing daily grow moreprosperous, in defiance of Indians, buffaloes, tempests, and illness.The Hacienda del Papagallo (Parrot farm), inhabited by the two brothers,was, like all the houses in this country, which are continually exposedto the inrods of the savages, a species of fortress built of carvedstone and surrounded by a thick and embrasured wall, with a gun at eachcorner: it stood on the top of a rather lofty hill, and commanded theplain for a considerable distance.

  Don Pacheco, the elder of the two brothers, was married and had twodaughters, little creatures scarce three years of age, whose joyouscries and ravishing smiles filled the interior of the hacienda withgaiety. Hardly three leagues from the farm was another, occupied byNorthern Americans, adventurers of more than dubious conduct, who hadcome to the country no one knew how, and who, since they inhabited it,led a mysteriously problematical existence, which gave birth to thestrangest and most contradictory reports about them.

  It was whispered that, under the guise of peaceful farmers, these menmaintained relations with the bandits who flocked into the country fromevery side, and that they were the secret chiefs of a dangerousassociation of malefactors, who had ravaged the country for severalyears past with impunity. On several occasions the two brothers haddisputes with these unpleasant neighbours about cattle that haddisappeared and other pecadillos of the same nature. In a word, theylived with them on the footing of an armed peace.

  A few days previous to the period to which this chapter refers, DonPacheco had a sharp altercation with one of these Americans of the nameof Wilkes, about several slaves the fellow tried to seduce fromhacienda, and the result was, that Don Pacheco, naturally hot-tempered,gave him a tremendous horsewhipping. The other swallowed the insultwithout making any attempt to revenge himself; but he had withdrawn,muttering the most terrible threats against Don Pacheco.

  Still, as we have said, the affair had no further consequences. Nearly amonth had passed, and the brothers had heard nothing from theirneighbours. On the evening of the day which we take up our narrative, DonStefano, mounted on a mustang, was preparing to leave the hacienda, toride to Nacogdoches, where important business called him.

  "Then, you are really going?" Don Pacheco said.

  "At once: you know that I put off the journey as long as I could."

  "How long do you expect to be absent?"

  "Four days, at the most."

  "Good: we shall not expect you, then, before."

  "Oh, it is very possible I may return sooner."

  "Why so?"

  "Shall I tell you? Well, I do not feel easy in mind."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I am anxious, I know not why. Many times I have left you, brother, forlonger journeys than this--"

  "Well!" Don Pacheco interrupted him.

  "I never felt before as I do at this moment."

  "You startle me, brother. What is the matter with you?"

  "I could not explain it to you. I have a foreboding of evil. In spite ofmyself, my heart is contracted on leaving you."

  "That is strange," Don Pacheco muttered, suddenly becoming thoughtful."I do not dare confess it to you, brother; but I have just the samefeeling as yourself, and am afraid I know not why."

  "Brother," Don Stefano replied in a gloomy voice, "you know how we loveeach other. Since our father's death, we have constantly sharedeverything--joy and sorrow, fortune or reverses. Brother, thisforeboding is sent us from Heaven. A great danger threatens us."

  "Perhaps so," Don Pacheco said sadly.

  "Listen, brother," Don Stefano remarked, resolutely. "I will not go."

  And he made a movement to dismount, but his brother checked him.

  "No," he said, "we are men. We must not, then, let ourselves beconquered by foolish thoughts, which are only chimeras produced by adiseased imagination."

  "No. I prefer to remain here a few days longer."

  "You told me yourself that your interests claim your presence atNacogdoches. Go, but return as soon as possible."

  There was a silence, during which the brothers reflected deeply. Themoon rose pallid and mournful on the horizon.

  "That Wilkes is a villain," Don Stefano went on; "who knows whether heis not waiting my departure to attempt on the hacienda one of thoseterrible expeditions of which he is accused by the public voice?"

  Don Pacheco began laughing, and, stretching out his hand in thedirection of the farm, whose white walls stood out clearly on the darkblue sky, he said:--

  "The Papagallo has too hard sides for those bandits. Go in peace,brother, they will not venture it."

  "May Heaven grant it!" Don Stefano murmured.

  "Oh, those men are cowards, and I inflicted a well-merited punishment onthe scoundrel."

  "Agreed."

  "Well?"

  "It's precisely because those men are cowards that I fear them.Canarios! I know as well as you that they will not dare openly to attackyou."

  "What have I to fear, then?" Don Pacheco interrupted him.

  "Treachery, brother."

  "Why, have I not five hundred devoted peons on the hacienda? Go withoutfear, I tell you."

  "You wish it?"

  "I insist on it."

  "Good-bye, then," Don Stefano said, stifling a sigh. "Good-bye, brother,till we meet again."

  Don Stefano dug his spurs into his horse's flanks and started at fullspeed. For a long time his brother followed the rider's outline on thesandy road, till he turned a corner, and Don Pacheco re-entered thehacienda with an anxious heart.

  Don Stefano, stimulated by the vague alarm that oppressed him, onlystopped the absolutely necessary period at Nacogdoches to finish hisbusiness, and hurried back scarce two days after his departure.Strangely enough, the nearer he drew to the farm, the greater hisanxiety grew, though it was impossible for him to explain the causes ofthe feeling.

  Around home all was tranquil--the sky, studded with an infinite numberof glistening stars, spread over his head its dome of azure; atintervals, the howling of the coyote was mingled with the hoarse lowingof the buffaloes, or the roars of the jaguars in quest of prey.

  Don Stefano still advanced, bowed over his horse's neck, with paleforehead and heaving chest, listening to the numerous sounds of thesolitude, and trying to pierce with vivid glance the darkness that hidfrom him the point to which he was hurrying with the speed of a tornado.

  After a ride of six hours, the Mexican suddenly uttered a yell of agony,as he violently pulled up his panting steed. Before him the Hacienda delPapagallo appeared, surrounded by a belt of flames. The
magnificentbuilding was now only a shapeless pile of smoking ruins, reflecting itsruddy flames on the sky for a considerable distance.

  "My brother! My brother!" Don Stefano shrieked in his despair.

  And he rushed into the furnace.

  A mournful silence brooded over the hacienda. At every step the Mexicanstumbled over corpses half-consumed by the flames and horriblymutilated. Mad with grief and rage, with his hair and clothes burned bythe flames that enveloped him, Don Stefano continued his researches.

  What was he seeking in this accursed charnel house? He did not himselfknow, but still he sought. Not a shriek, not a sigh! On all sides thesilence of death!--that terrible silence which makes the heart leap, andices the bravest man with fear!

  What had taken place during Don Stefano's absence?--What enemy hadproduced these ruins in a few short hours?

  The first beams of dawn were beginning to tinge the horizon with theirfugitive opaline tints, and the sky gradually assumed that ruddy huewhich announces sunrise. Don Stefano had passed the whole night in vainand sterile researches, and though he had constantly interrogated theruins, they remained dumb.

  The Mexican, overcome by grief, and compelled to acknowledge his ownimpotence, gave Heaven a glance of reproach and despair, and throwinghimself on the calcined ground, he hid his face in his hands, and wept!The sight of this young, handsome, brave man weeping silently over theruins whose secret he had been unable to discover must have beenheartrending.

  Suddenly, Don Stefano started up, with flashing eye, and a face on whichindomitable energy was imprinted.

  "Oh!" he shouted, in a voice that resembled the howl of a wild beast,"vengeance! Vengeance!"

  A voice that seemed to issue from the tomb answered his, and Don Stefanoturned round with a shudder. Two yards from him, his brother, pale,mutilated, and bleeding, was leaning against a fallen wall, like aspectre.

  "Ah!" the Mexican exclaimed, as he rushed toward him.

  "You come too late, brother," the wounded man murmured, in a voicechoking with the death rattle.

  "Oh! I will save you, brother," Don Stefano said, desperately.

  "No," Don Pacheco replied sadly, shaking his head, "I am dying, brother;your foreboding did not deceive you."

  "Hope!"

  And, raising his brother in his powerful arms, he prepared to pay himthat attention which his condition seemed to demand.

  "I am dying, I tell you--all is useless," Don Pacheco continued, in avoice that momentarily grew weaker. "Listen to me."

  "Speak!"

  "Say that you will avenge me, brother?" the dying man asked, his eyeemitting a fierce flash.

  "I will avenge you," Don Stefano answered; "I swear it by our Saviour!"

  "Good! I have been assassinated by men dressed as Apache Indians, butamong them I fancied I recognised--"

  "Whom?"

  "Wilkes the squatter, and Samuel, his accomplice."

  "Enough! Where is your wife?"

  "Dead! My daughters, save them!" Don Pacheco murmured.

  "Where are they?"

  "Carried off by the bandits."

  "Oh! I will discover them, even if hidden in the bowels of the earth!Did you not recognise anyone else?"

  "Yes, yes, one more," the dying man said, in an almost unintelligiblevoice.

  Don Stefano bent over his brother in order to hear more distinctly.

  "Who? Tell me--brother, speak in Heaven's name!"

  The wounded man made a supreme effort.

  "There was another man, formerly a peon of ours."

  "His name?" Don Stefano asked eagerly.

  Don Pacheco was growing weaker, his face had assumed an earthy hue, andhis eyes could no longer distinguish objects.

  "I cannot remember," he sighed rather than said.

  "One word, only one, brother."

  "Yes, listen--it is Sand--ah!"

  He suddenly fell back, uttering a terrible cry, and clutching at hisbrother's arm; he writhed in a final convulsion, and all was over.

  Don Stefano knelt by his brother's corpse, embraced it tenderly, piouslyclosed its eyes, and then got up. He dug a grave with his machete amongthe smoking ruins of the hacienda, in which he laid his brother's body.When this sacred duty was performed, he addressed an ardent prayer tothe Deity in behalf of the sinful man who was about to appear before Hisjudgment seat, and then, stretching out his arms over the grave, he saidin a loud, distinct voice--

  "Sleep in peace, brother, sleep in peace. I promise you a gloriousrevenge."

  Don Stefano slowly descended the hill, found his horse, which had spentthe night in nibbling the young tree shoots, and started at a gallop,after giving a parting glance to these ruins, under which all hishappiness lay buried.

  No one ever heard of Don Stefano again in Texas: was he dead too,without taking that vengeance which he had sworn to achieve? No onecould say. The Americans had also disappeared since that awful night andleft no sign. In these primitive countries things are soon forgotten:life passes away there so rapidly, and is so full of strange incidents,that the events of the morrow obliterate the remembrances of those ofthe eve. Ere long the population of Texas had completely forgotten thisterrible catastrophe.

  Every year, however, a man appeared on the hill where the hacienda oncestood, whose ruins the luxuriant vegetation of the country had long agoovergrown; this man seated himself on the silent ruins, and passed thewhole night with his face buried in his hands.

  "What did he there?"

  "Whence did he come?"

  "Who was he?"

  These three questions ever remained unanswered, for at daybreak thestranger rode off again, not to return till the following year on theanniversary of the frightful tragedy. One strange fact was provedhowever, after every visit paid by this man--one, two, or even sometimesthree horribly mutilated human heads were found lying on the hill.

  What demoniac task was this incomprehensible being performing? Was itDon Stefano pursuing his vengeance?

  We shall probably see presently.