"What! continue my journey?" the monk asked timidly; "Do you intend to abandon me then?"

"Why not? I have already wasted too much time with you, and must attend to my own affairs."

"What?" the monk objected, "After the interest you have so benevolently taken in me, you would have the courage to abandon me thus when almost dead, and not caring what may happen to me after your departure?"

"Why not? I do not know you, and have no occasion to help you.

Accidentally crossing this clearing, I noticed you lying breathless and pale as a corpse. I gave you that ease which is refused to no one in the desert; now that you have returned to life, I can no longer be of service to you, so I am off; what can be more simple or logical?

Goodbye, and may the demon, for whom you took me just now, grant you his protection!"

After uttering these words in a tone of sarcasm and bitter irony, the stranger threw his rifle over his shoulder, and walked a few paces toward his horse.

"Stay, in Heaven's name!" the monk exclaimed, as he rose with greater haste than with his weakness seemed possible, but fear produced the strength; "What will become of me alone in this desert?"

"That does not concern me," the stranger answered, as he coolly loosed the arm of his zarape, which the monk had seized; "is not the maxim of the desert, each for himself?"

"Listen," the monk said eagerly; "my name is Fray Antonio, and I am wealthy: if you protect me, I will reward you handsomely."

The stranger smiled contemptuously.

"What have you to fear? you are young, stout, and well armed; are you not capable of protecting yourself?"

"No, because I am pursued by implacable enemies. Last night they inflicted on me horrible and degrading torture, and I only managed with great difficulty to escape from their clutches. This morning accident brought me across two of these men. On seeing them a species of raging madness possessed me; the idea of avenging myself occurred to me; I aimed at them, and fired, and then fled, not knowing whither I was going, mad with rage and terror; on reaching this spot I fell, crushed and exhausted, as much through the sufferings I endured this night, as through the fatigues caused by a long and headlong race along abominable roads. These men are doubtless pursuing me; if they find me--and they will do so, for they are wood-rangers, perfectly acquainted with the desert--they will kill me without pity; my only hope is in you, so in the name of what you hold dearest on earth, save me! Save me, and my grat.i.tude will be unbounded."

The stranger had listened to this long and pathetic pleading without moving a muscle of his face. When the monk ceased, with breath and argument equally exhausted, he rested the b.u.t.t of his rifle on the ground.

"All that you say may be true," he answered drily, "but I care as little for it as I do for a flash in the pan; get out of the affair as you think proper, for your entreaties are useless; if you knew who I am, you would very soon give up tormenting my ears with your jabbering."

The monk fixed a terrified look on the strange man, not knowing what to say to him, or the means he should employ to reach his heart.

"Who are you then?" he asked him, rather for the sake of saying something than in the hope of an answer.

"Who I am?" he said, with an ironical smile, "You would like to know.

Very good, listen in your turn; I have only a few words to say, but they will ice the blood in your veins with terror; I am the man called the White Scalper, the Pitiless one!"

The monk tottered back a few paces, and clasped his hands with an effort.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" he exclaimed, frenziedly; "I am lost!"

At this moment the hoot of an owl was heard a short distance off. The hunter started.

"Some one was listening to us!" he exclaimed, and rushed rapidly to the side whence the signal came, while the monk, half dead with terror, fell on his knees, and addressed a fervent prayer to Heaven.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE WHITE SCALPER.

We must now stop our story for a little while, in order to give the reader certain details about the strange man whom we introduced in our previous chapter, details doubtless very incomplete, but still indispensable to the proper comprehension of facts that have to follow.

If, instead of telling a true story, we were inventing a romance, we should certainly guard ourselves against introducing into our narrative persons like the one we have to deal with now; unhappily, we are constrained to follow the line ready traced before us, and depict our characters as they are, as they existed, and as the majority still exist.

A few years before the period at which the first part of our story begins, a rumour, at first dull, but which soon attained a certain degree of consistency and a great notoriety in the vast deserts of Texas, arose almost suddenly, icing with fear the Indios Bravos, and the adventurers of every description who continually wander about these vast solitudes.

It was stated that a man, apparently white, had been for some time on the desert, pursuing the Redskins, against whom he seemed to have declared an obstinate war. Acts of horrible cruelty and extraordinary boldness were narrated about this man, who was said to be always alone; wherever he met Indians, no matter their number, he attacked them; those who fell into his power were scalped, and their hearts torn out, and in order that it might be known that they had fallen under his blows, he made on their stomach a wide incision, in the shape of a cross. At times this implacable enemy of the red race glided into their villages, fired them during the night, when all were asleep, and then he made a frightful butchery, killing all who came in his way; women, children, and old men, he made no exception.

This gloomy redresser of wrongs, however, did not merely pursue Indians with his implacable hatred--half-breeds, smugglers, pirates, in a word, all the bold border ruffians accustomed to live at the expense of society had a rude account to settle with him; but the latter he did not scalp, but merely contented himself with fastening them securely to trees, where he condemned them to die of hunger, and become the prey of wild beasts.

During the first years, the adventurers and Redskins, drawn together by the feeling of a common danger, had several times banded to put an end to this ferocious enemy, bind him, and inflict the law of retaliation on him; but this man seemed to be protected by a charm, which enabled him to escape all the snares laid for him, and circ.u.mvent all the ambuscades formed on his road, It was impossible to catch him; his movements were so rapid and unexpected, that he often appeared at considerable distances from the spot where he was awaited, and where he had been seen shortly before. According to the Indians and adventurers, he was invulnerable; bullets and arrows rebounded from his chest; and soon, through the continual good fortune that accompanied all his enterprises, this man became a subject of universal terror on the prairie; his enemies, convinced that all they might attempt against him would prove useless, gave up a struggle which they regarded as waged against a superior power. The strangest legends were current about him; every one feared him as a maleficent spirit; the Indians named him _Kiein-Stomann_, or the White Scalper, and the Adventurers designated him among themselves by the epithet of Pitiless.

These two names, as we see, were justly given to this man, with whom murder and carnage seemed the supreme enjoyment, such pleasure did he find in feeling his victims quivering beneath his blood-red hand, and tearing the heart out of their bosom; hence his mere name, uttered in a whisper, filled the bravest with horror.

But who was this man? Whence did he come? What fearful catastrophe had cast him into the fearful mode of life he led?

No one could answer these questions. This individual was a horrifying enigma, which no person could solve.

Was he one of those monstrous organizations, which, beneath the envelope of man, contain a tiger's heart?

Or, else, a soul ulcerated by a frightful misfortune, all whose faculties are directed to one object, vengeance?

Both these hypotheses were equally possible; perhaps both were true.

Still, as every medal has its reverse, and man is not perfect in either good or evil, this individual had at times gleams, not of pity, but perhaps of fatigue, when blood mounted to his gorge, choked him, and rendered him a little less cruel, a little less implacable, almost human, in a word. But these moments were brief, these attacks, as he called them himself, very rare; nature regained the upper hand almost at once, and he became only the more terrible, because he had been so near growing compa.s.sionate.

This was all known about this individual at the moment when we brought him on the stage in so singular a fashion. The a.s.sistance he had given the monk was so contrary to all his habits, that he must have been suffering at the moment from one of his best attacks, to have consented not only to give such eager attention to one of his fellows, but also to waste so much time in listening to his lamentations and entreaties.

To finish the information we have to give about this person, we will add that no one knew whether he had a permanent abode; he was not known to have any woman to love, or any follower; he had ever been seen alone; and during the ten years he had roamed the desert in every direction, his countenance had undergone no change; he had ever the same appearance of old age and strength, the same long and white beard, and the same wrinkled face.

As we have said, the scalper rushed into the chaparral to discover who had given the signal that startled him; his researches were minute, but they produced no other result than that of enabling him to discover that he was not mistaken, and that a spy hidden in the bushes had really seen all that took place in the clearing, and heard all that was said.

Blue-fox, after summoning his comrades, cautiously retired, convinced that if he fell into the hands of the Scalper, he would be lost in spite of all his courage.

The latter returned thoughtfully to the side of the monk, whose praying still went on, and had a.s.sumed such proportions that it threatened to become interminable.

The Scalper looked for a moment at the Fray, an ironical smile playing round his pale lips the while, and then gave him a hearty blow with the b.u.t.t of his rifle between the shoulders.

"Get up!" he said, roughly.

The monk fell on his hands, and remained motionless. Believing that the other intended to kill him, he resigned himself to his fate, and awaited the death-blow which, in his opinion, he must speedily receive.

"Come, get up, you devil of a monk!" the Scalper went on; "Have you not mumbled paternosters enough?"

Fray Ambrosio gently raised his head; a gleam of hope returned to him.

"Forgive me, Excellency," he replied; "I have finished; I am now at your orders; what do you desire of me?"