the heat was oppressive, large blackish clouds, fringed with grey and borne by the breeze, chased heavily athwart the sky, drawing nearer and nearer to the earth. In a word, all foreboded one of those hurricanes such as are only seen in these countries, and which make the most intrepid men turn pale with terror.
Bloodson still ascended, bearing the girl in his arms, whose lifeless head hung over his shoulder. Drops of lukewarm rain, large as dollars, had begun to fall at intervals, and spotted the earth, which immediately drank them up; a sharp and penetrating odour exhaled from the ground and impregnated the atmosphere.
But Bloodson still went up with the same firm step, his head drooping and eyebrows contracted. At length he reached the top of the hill, when he stopped and bent a searching glance around. At this moment, a dazzling flash shot athwart the sky, illuminating the landscape with a bluish tint, and the thunder burst forth furiously.
"Oh!" Bloodson muttered with a sinister accent, and as if answering aloud an internal thought, "nature is harmonising with the scene about to take place here; but the storm of the Heavens is not so terrible as the one growling in my heart. Come, come! I only needed this fearful melody. I am the avenger, and am about to accomplish the demoniacal task which I imposed on myself; during a night of delirium."
After uttering these ill-omened words, he continued his progress, proceeding toward a pile of half-calcined stones, whose black points stood out of the tall grass a short distance off. The top of the hill where Bloodson was, offered a scene of inexpressible savageness. Through the tufts of grass might be noticed ruins blackened by fire, pieces of wall, and vaults half broken in. Here and there were fruit trees, dahlias, cedars, and a noria or well, whose long pole still bore at one end the remains of the leathern bucket once employed to draw water.
In the centre of the ruins stood a large wooden cross, marking the site of a tomb; at the foot of this cross were piled up, with ghastly symmetry, some twenty grinning skulls, to which the rain, wind, and sun had given the lustre and yellowish tinge of ivory. Round the tomb, snakes and lizards, those guests of sepulchres, silently glided through the grass, watching with their round and startled eyes the stranger who dared to disturb their solitude. Not far from the tomb, a species of shed, made of interlaced reeds, was falling to ruin, but still offered a scanty shelter to travellers surprised by a storm. It was toward this shed that Bloodson proceeded.
In a few minutes he reached it, and was thus sheltered from the rain, which at this moment fell in torrents. The storm had reached the height of its fury – the flashes succeeded each other uninterruptedly; the thunder rolled furiously, and the wind violently lashed the trees. It was, in a word, one of those awful nights on which deeds without a name, which the sun will not illumine with its brilliant beams, are accomplished.
Bloodson laid the girl on a pile of dry leaves in one of the corners of the shed, and after gazing on her attentively for some seconds, he folded his arms on his chest, frowned, and began walking up and down, muttering unconnected sentences. Each time he passed before the maiden, he stopped, bent on her a glance of undefinable meaning, and resumed his walk with a shake of his head.
"Come," he said hoarsely, "I must finish it! What! That girl, so strong and robust, lies there, pale, worn out, half dead. Why is it not Red Cedar that I hold thus beneath my heel? – but patience, his turn will come, and then!"
A sardonic smile played round his lips, and he bent over the girl. He gently raised her head, and was about to make her smell a bottle he had taken from her girdle, when he suddenly let her fall on her bed of leaves, and rushed away, uttering a cry of terror.
"No," he said, "it is not possible: I am mistaken, it is an illusion, a dream."
After a moments' hesitation, he returned to the girl, and bent over her again. But this time his manner had completely changed: though he had been rough and brutal previously, he was now full of attention to her. During the various events to which White Gazelle had been the victim, some of the diamond buttons which fastened her vest had been torn off, and exposed her bosom. Bloodson had noticed a black velvet scapulary, on which two interlaced letters were embroidered in silver, suspended round her neck by a thin gold chain. It was the sight of this mysterious cypher which caused Bloodson the violent emotion from which he was now suffering.
He seized the scapulary with a hand trembling with impatience, broke the chain, and waited till a flash enabled him to see the cypher a second time, and assure himself that he was not deceived. He had not long to wait: within a few seconds a dazzling flash illumined the hill. Bloodson looked, and was convinced: the cypher was really the one he fancied he had seen. He fell to the ground, buried his head in his hands, and reflected profoundly. Half an hour passed ere this man emerged from his statue-like immobility; when he raised his head, tears were coursing down his bronzed cheeks.
"Oh! this doubt is frightful!" he exclaimed; "at all risks I will remove it: I must know what I have to hope."
And drawing himself up haughtily to his full height, he walked with a firm and steady step toward the girl, who still lay motionless. Then, as we saw him once before with Shaw, he employed the same method which had been so successful with the young man, in order to recal White Gazelle to life. But the poor girl had been subjected to such rude trials during the last two days, that she was quite exhausted. In spite of Bloodson's eager care, she still retained her terrible corpse-like rigidity: all remedies were powerless. The stranger was in despair at the unsatisfactory results of his attempts to recall the girl to life.
"Oh!" he exclaimed at each instant, "She cannot be dead: Heaven will not permit it."
And he began again employing the measures whose futility had been proved to him. All at once he smote his forehead violently.
"I must be mad," he exclaimed.
And searching in his pocket, he drew from it a crystal flask, filled with a blood-red liquor; he opened with his dagger the girl's teeth, and let two drops of the fluid fall into her mouth. The effect was instantaneous: White Gazelle's features relaxed, a pinky hue covered her face; she faintly opened her eyes, and murmured in a weak voice —
"Good Heaven! Where am I?"
"She is saved!" Bloodson exclaimed with a sigh of joy, as he wiped away the perspiration that ran down his forehead. In the meanwhile the storm had attained its utmost fury; the wind furiously shook the wretched shed, the rain fell in torrents, and the thunder burst forth with a terrible din.
"A fine night for a recognition!" Bloodson muttered.
CHAPTER V
THE HACIENDA QUEMADA
It was a strange group formed by this charming creature and this rough wood ranger, at the top of this devastated hill, troubled by the thunder, and illumined by the coruscating lightning.
White Gazelle had fallen back again, pale and inanimate. Bloodson gazed out into the night, and reassured by the silence, bent a second time over the girl. Pallid as an exquisite lily laid prostrate by the tempest, the poor child seemed scarce to breathe. Bloodson raised her in his nervous arms, and bore her to a piece of broken wall, at the foot of which he laid his zarapé, and placed her on this softer couch. The girl's head hung senseless on his shoulder. Then he gazed at her for a long time: grief and pity were painted on Bloodson's face.
He, whose life had hitherto been but one long tragedy, who had no belief in his heart, who was ignorant of softer feelings and sweet sympathies; he, the avenger and slayer of the Indians, was affected, and felt something new stirring within him. Tears ran down his cheeks.
"Oh, my God!" he exclaimed anxiously, "Can she be dead? Yes," he added, "I was cowardly and cruel toward this poor creature, and God punishes me."
The name, which he only used to blaspheme, he now pronounced almost with respect; it was a species of prayer, a cry from his heart. This indomitable man was at length conquered, he believed.
"How to help her?" he asked himself.
The rain that continued to fall in torrents, and inundated the girl, at length recalled her to life; she partly opened her eyes, and muttered softly:
"Where am I? What has happened? Oh, I fancied I was dying."
"She speaks, she lives, she is saved," Bloodson