I had scarce time to make this observation, when the man, suddenly turning the angle of the rock, stood close by my side, where he halted apparently to recover his breath.
His costume at once revealed to me that he was an Indian; though his garments, his tall stature, and haughty mien, lent to him an aspect altogether different from that of most of the Indians I had hitherto encountered in Mexico. The proud air with which he bore himself, the fiery expression of his eye, his athletic limbs, and odd apparel, were none of them in keeping with the abject mien which now characterises the descendants of the ancient masters of Anahuac. In the grey light of the morning, I could see suspended from his shoulders the instrument that had made the mysterious music—a large sea-shell—a long, slender, curved conch, that hung glistening under his arm.
Struck with the singular appearance of this man, I could not help entering into conversation with him; though he appeared as if he would have passed me without speaking a word.
“You are early abroad, friend?” I remarked.
“Yes, master,” he replied; “early for a man as old as I am.”
I could not help regarding this as a jest; for over the shoulders of the Indian fell immense masses of jet black hair, which seemed to give contradiction to the statement of his being an old man.
I looked more narrowly into his countenance. His bronzed skin appeared to cling closely to his angular features, but there were none of those deep furrows that betray the presence of advanced age.
“How old are you?” I asked at length.
“That I cannot tell, cavallero,” replied he. “I tried from the time I was able to distinguish the dry season from that of the rains to keep an account of my age; and I succeeded in doing so up till I was fifty. After that, for particular reasons, I did not care to know it, and so I left off counting.”
“You say you are more than fifty years old?” and as I put this inquiry I glanced at the long purple black tresses that hung over his shoulders.
“Nearly half as much more,” was the reply. “You are looking at the colour of my hair. There are ravens who have seen a hundred seasons of rain without having a feather whitened. Ah! what matters the course of years to me? A raven croaked upon the roof of my father’s cabin when I was born, at the same instant that my father had traced upon the floor the figure of one of these birds. Well, then! of course I shall live as long as that raven lives. What use then to keep a reckoning of years that cannot be numbered?”
“You think, then, that your life is in some way attached to that of the raven that perched on the paternal roof when you came into the world?”
“It is the belief of my ancestors, the Zapoteques, and it is also mine,” seriously responded the Indian.
It was not my desire to combat the superstitions of the Zapoteques; and, dropping the subject, I inquired from him his purpose in carrying the conch—whether it was for whiling away his time upon the journey, or whether there was not also connected with it some other belief of his ancestors?
The Indian hesitated a moment before making reply.
“It is only a remembrance of my country,” he said, after a short silence. “When I hear the echoes of the Sierra repeat the sounds of my shell, I can fancy myself among the mountains of Tehuantepec, where I used to hunt the tiger—in pursuing my profession of tigrero. Or at other times I may fancy it to be the signals of the pearl-seekers in the Gulf, when I followed the calling of a buzo (diver); for I have hunted the sea tigers who guard the banks of pearls under the water, as I have those that ravage the herds of cattle upon the great savannas. But time passes, cavallero; I must say good day to you. I have to reach the hacienda of Portezuelo by noon, and it’s a long journey to make in the time. Puez, adios, cavallero!”
So saying, the Indian strode off with that measured step peculiar to his race; and was soon lost to my sight, as he descended into the ravine on the opposite side of the plateau.
As I returned towards the inn I could hear the prolonged notes of his marine trumpet rising up out of the chasm, and reverberating afar off against the precipitous sides of the Sierra Madre.
“What the devil is all this row about?” inquired Captain Ruperto Castaños, as he issued forth from the venta.
I recounted to him the interview I had just had; and the singular communications I had received from the Indian.
“It don’t astonish me,” said he; “the Zapoteques are still more pagan than Christian, and given to superstitious practices to a greater degree than any other Indians in Mexico. Our Catholic curas in their villages are there only for the name of the thing, and as a matter of formality. The business of the worthy padres among them must be a perfect sinecure. I fancy I understand what the fellow meant, well enough. Whenever a Zapoteque woman is about to add one to the number of their community, the expectant father of the child assembles all his relations in his cabin; and, having traced out the figures of certain animals on the floor, he rubs them out one after another in their turn. That which is being blotted out, at the precise moment when the child is born, is called its tona. They believe that, ever after, the life of the newborn is connected in some mysterious manner with that of the animal which is its tona; and that when the latter dies so will the former! The child thus consecrated to the tona, while growing up, seeks out some animal of the kind, takes care of it, and pays respect to it, as the negroes of Africa do to their fetish.”
“It is to be presumed, then, that the Indian father will make choice only of such animals as may be gifted with longevity?”
The captain made no reply to my suggestion, farther than to say that the Zapoteque Indians were a brave race, easily disciplined, and out of whom excellent soldiers had been made during the war of the Revolution.
After a hasty desayuno at the venta, my travelling companion and I resumed our journey; and, crossing the second great chain of the Mexican Andes, at the end of six days of fatiguing travel we reached the ancient town of Tepic.
Here it was necessary for me to remain some time, awaiting the arrival of important letters which I expected to receive from the capital of Mexico.
During the first week of my stay at Tepic, I saw but very little of my fellow-voyager—who was all the time busy with his own affairs, and most part of it absent from the little fonda where we had taken up our abode. What these affairs might be, God only knows; but I could not help thinking that the worthy ex-captain of guerilleros carried on his commercial transactions, as in past times he had his military ones—a little after the partisan fashion, and not altogether in accordance with legal rules.
After all, it was no affair of mine. What most concerned me, was that with all his running about he had not yet been able to meet with his friend, Don Cornelio Lantejas—whom no one in Tepic seemed to know anything of—and I was beginning to suspect that the existence of this individual was as problematical as the business of the captain himself, when a lucky chance led to the discovery of the ex-aide-de-camp of Morelos.
“Don Ruperto appears to have gone crazy,” said Doña Faustina, our hostess of the fonda, one morning as I seated myself to breakfast.
“Why, Doña Faustina?” I inquired.
“Because, Cavallero,” replied she, evidently piqued at the captain’s disregard of her hospitable board, “he is hardly ever here at meal times, and when he does show himself, it is so late that the tortillas enchiladas are quite cold, and scarce fit to eat.”
“Ah, señora!” replied I, by way of excusing the irregularity of the captain’s habits, “that is not astonishing. An old soldier of the Revolution is not likely to be very punctual about his time of eating.”
“That is no reason at all,” rejoined the hostess. “We have here, for instance, the good presbitero, Don Lucas de Alacuesta, who was an insurgent officer through the whole campaign of the illustrious Morelos,