"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 attack you."

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

"Treachery, brother."

"Why, have I not five hundred devoted peons on the hacienda? Go without fear, 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 full speed. For a long time his brother followed the rider's outline on the sandy road, till he turned a corner, and Don Pacheco re-entered the hacienda with an anxious heart.

Don Stefano, stimulated by the vague alarm that oppressed him, only stopped the absolutely necessary period at Nacogdoches to finish his business, and hurried back scarce two days after his departure.

Strangely enough, the nearer he drew to the farm, the greater his anxiety grew, though it was impossible for him to explain the causes of the feeling.

Around home all was tranquil--the sky, studded with an infinite number of glistening stars, spread over his head its dome of azure; at intervals, the howling of the coyote was mingled with the hoa.r.s.e lowing of the buffaloes, or the roars of the jaguars in quest of prey.

Don Stefano still advanced, bowed over his horse's neck, with pale forehead and heaving chest, listening to the numerous sounds of the solitude, and trying to pierce with vivid glance the darkness that hid from 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 del Papagallo appeared, surrounded by a belt of flames. The magnificent building was now only a shapeless pile of smoking ruins, reflecting its ruddy 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 Mexican stumbled over corpses half-consumed by the flames and horribly mutilated. Mad with grief and rage, with his hair and clothes burned by the flames that enveloped him, Don Stefano continued his researches.

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

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

The first beams of dawn were beginning to tinge the horizon with their fugitive opaline tints, and the sky gradually a.s.sumed that ruddy hue which announces sunrise. Don Stefano had pa.s.sed the whole night in vain and sterile researches, and though he had constantly interrogated the ruins, they remained dumb.

The Mexican, overcome by grief, and compelled to acknowledge his own impotence, gave Heaven a glance of reproach and despair, and throwing himself on the calcined ground, he hid his face in his hands, and wept!

The sight of this young, handsome, brave man weeping silently over the ruins whose secret he had been unable to discover must have been heartrending.

Suddenly, Don Stefano started up, with flashing eye, and a face on which indomitable 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 Stefano turned round with a shudder. Two yards from him, his brother, pale, mutilated, and bleeding, was leaning against a fallen wall, like a spectre.

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

"You come too late, brother," the wounded man murmured, in a voice choking 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 him that attention which his condition seemed to demand.

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

"Speak!"

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

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

"Good! I have been a.s.sa.s.sinated by men dressed as Apache Indians, but among 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 unintelligible voice.

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.