The Mexicans entered, then, although not without feelings of dread, into the terrible cavern, whose mouth opened yawning before them. The building was vast, the walls were lofty.
After proceeding for about ten minutes, the Mexicans found themselves in a species of rotunda, in the centre of which a huge brazier was flaming; four long corridors crossed the rotunda at right angles. The Tigercat, still followed by the travellers, entered one of these. He stopped on reaching a door formed of a reed hurdle.
"Make yourselves at home," said he; "your lodgings consists of two chambers, which have no communication with the rest of the cave. By my orders you will be supplied with food, with wood to make a fire, and torches of ocote to give you light."
"I thank you for these attentions," replied Don Pedro. "I had little reason to expect them."
"And why not? Do you think that I do not know how to practise Mexican hospitality, in its fullest extent, whenever it suits me?"
"Sir!" said the hacendero, with a gesture of deprecation.
"Silence!" said the bandit, interrupting him; "You are my guests for the night. Sleep in peace; nothing shall disturb your rest. In an hour I will send you a potion for the lady to drink. We shall meet again tomorrow." And, bowing with an ease and courtesy little expected by Don Pedro from such a man, the Tigercat took his leave and quitted the chamber.
For a few seconds the step resounded under the dark vault of the corridor; then it was silenced. The travellers were alone, and the hacendero determined to investigate the chambers prepared for them.
CHAPTER IV
SUPERFICIAL REMARKS
The haciendas of Spanish America were never feudal tenures, whatever certain badly informed authors may assert, but simply large agricultural holdings, as their name clearly indicates.
These haciendas, scattered over Mexico at great distances from each other, and surrounded by vast stretches of country, for the greater part uninhabited, are generally situated on the top of abruptly rising hills, in positions easy of defence.
As the hacienda, properly so called, —i. e. the habitation of the proprietor of the estate, – forms the nucleus of the colony, and, in addition to the barns and stables, contains also the out houses, the lodgings of the peones, and, above all, the chapel, its walls are high, massive, and surrounded by a ditch, so as to put it out of danger from a coup-de-main.
These numerous haciendas frequently maintain from six to seven hundred individuals of all trades, the lands belonging to a farm of this description being often of greater extent than a whole province in France.
They are the wholesale breeding places of the wild horses and cattle that graze at freedom in the prairies, watched over at a distance by peones vaqueros as untamed as themselves.
The Hacienda de las Norias de San Antonio —i. e. St. Anthony's Wells – rose gracefully from the summit of a hill covered with thick groves of mahogany, Peru trees and mesquites, forming a belt of evergreen foliage, the palish green of which contrasted agreeably with the dead white of the lofty walls, crowned with almenas, a kind of battlement intended to announce the nobility of the proprietor of the holding.
In fact, Don Pedro de Luna was what is called a cristiano viejo (old Christian), and descended in a direct line from the first Spanish conquerors, without a single drop of Indian blood having been infused into the veins of his ancestors. So, although after the Declaration of Independence the ancient customs began to fall into disuse, Don Pedro de Luna was proud of his nobility, and clung to the almenas as marks of distinction which only noblemen were allowed to adopt in the time of the Spanish rule.
Since the period when, in the suite of that genial adventurer, Fernando Cortez, a Lopez de Luna had first put foot in America, the fortunes of this family, very poor and much reduced at that time – for Don Lopez literally possessed nothing but his cloak and sword, – the fortunes of this family, we say, had taken an incredible flight upwards, and entered on a career of prosperity that nothing in time's course could trammel. Thus Don Pedro de Luna, the actual representative of this ancient house, was in the enjoyment of wealth, the amount of which it would certainly have puzzled him to state, – wealth which had been increased still more by the property of Don Antonio de Luna, his elder brother, who had disappeared more than twenty-five years after events to which we shall have to revert, and who it was supposed had perished miserably in the mysterious wilderness in the neighbourhood of the hacienda. It was likely that he had fallen a victim to the horrible pangs of hunger, or more probably into the hands of the Apaches, those implacable enemies of the whites, on whom they ceaselessly wage an inveterate war.
In short Don Pedro was the sole representative of his name, and his fortune was immense. No one who has not visited the interior of Mexico can figure to himself the riches buried in these almost unknown regions, where certain land owners, if they would only take the trouble to put their affairs in order, would find themselves five or six times more wealthy than the greatest capitalists of the old world.
Now, although everything seemed to smile on the opulent hacendero, and although, to the world that looks beyond the surface, he seemed to enjoy, with every appearance of reason, an unalloyed happiness, nevertheless the deep wrinkles channelled in the forehead of Don Pedro, the mournful severity of his face, and his gaze often turned to heaven with an expression of sombre despair, might give rise to the surmise that the life all thought so happy was secretly agitated by a profound sorrow, which the years, as they rolled on, augmented instead of solacing.
And what was the sorrow? What storms had troubled the course of a life so calm on the surface?
The Mexicans are the most forgetful people on earth. This certainly arises from the nature of their climate, which is incessantly distracted by the most frightful cataclysms. The Mexican, whose life is passed on a volcano, who feels the soil incessantly trembling under his feet, only cares to live for today. For him yesterday no longer exists; tomorrow he may never see the sun rise; today is his all, for today is his own.
The inhabitants of the Hacienda de las Norias, incessantly exposed to the inroads of their redoubtable neighbours the redskins, constantly occupied in defending themselves from their attacks and depredations, were still more forgetful than the rest of their countrymen of a past in which they took no interest.
The secret of Don Pedro's grief, if really such a secret existed, was, therefore, confined pretty nearly to his own breast; and as he never complained, – never made allusion to the earlier years of his life, – surmise was impossible, and the ignorance of everyone on the subject complete.
One single being had the privilege of smoothing the anxious brow of the hacendero, and of bringing a languid and fleeting smile to his lips.
It was his daughter. Doña Hermosa at sixteen was dazzlingly beautiful. The jet black arches of her brow, finely traced as with a pencil, enhanced the beauty of a forehead not too high and of a creamy white. Her large eyes, blue and pensive, contrasted harmoniously with hair of ebon hue, which curled about the delicate neck, and on which the sweet jasmines died away with pleasure.
Short, like all Spanish women of her race, her figure was slender but well knit. No smaller feet had ever pressed in the dance the greensward of Mexico; no more delicate hand ever ransacked the dahlias of a garden. Her walk, easy, like that of all Creoles, was a serpentine and undulating motion, full of grace and of salero, as they say in Andalusia.
This exquisite girl scattered mirth and joy over the hacienda, whose echoes from morning to night repeated lovingly the melodious modulations of her pellucid notes, the pure and fresh qualities of which made the birds die of envy as they hid themselves under the foliage of the puerta (open court).
Don Pedro idolised his daughter; he felt for her that passionate and boundless affection the immense power of which can only be understood by those