The situation grew more and more critical. Several tiger cats had already bounded on to the platform. As fast as Don Torribio knocked them over, others took their place. The number of his enemies increased with every minute; his own strength and energy were gradually deserting him.
This strife of one man against a host of ferocious brutes had something grand and striking about it. Don Torribio, like one with the nightmare, strove in vain to beat back the constantly renewed crowds of his assailants: he felt close to him the hot and fetid breath of the tiger cats and panthers; the roaring of the jaguars, and mocking moans of the panthers, poured into his ears a frightful song, that deafened and made him giddy; the eyes of thousands of his invisible foes flashed through the obscurity, and fascinated his own gaze; and sometimes the heavy wing of the vulture or zopilote brushed his cheek, from which the cold sweat exuded.
An accurate perception of his own existence had vanished from his soul; he no longer thought: his life, if we may still use the expression, had grown mechanical; his motions and gestures were those of a machine, and his arm rose and fell with the dull regularity of a pendulum.
Talons had already torn his flesh; several catamounts, rushing upon him, had fastened on his throat, and he had been obliged to seize them bodily to force them to quit their hold. His blood was streaming from twenty wounds, superficial, it is true; but the moment was close at hand when the energy which alone sustained him would be worn out, and he would fall from the rock, to be torn in pieces by the brutes who were ever pressing more madly upon him.
At this solemn moment, when strength and courage were alike failing, a last cry issued from his breast – a cry of agony, a cry of horrible expression, which was repeated far and wide by the echoes: the last, the final protest of a bold man, who owns himself vanquished, and instinctively calls on his kind for succour before he falls.
Wonderful to relate, a cry answered his own!
Don Torribio, astonished, and not daring to believe that a miracle was to take place in a wilderness where none before himself had dared to penetrate, fancied his ears had deceived him; yet, confessing to himself how little strength was still left him, and feeling hope faintly reviving in his soul, he uttered a second cry, more poignant, more help-seeking than the former.
As soon as the echoes of the forest were silent after their repetition of the cry, a single word, weak as a sigh, was borne to his listening ears on the wings of the breeze: "Hope!"
Don Torribio recovered himself. Electrified by the word, he seemed to regain new life and strength, and redoubled his strokes on his numberless assailants.
Suddenly the gallop of many horses was heard in the distance, several discharges of firearms illumined the darkness with their transient splendour, and some men, or rather demons, rushed unexpectedly into the thickest crowd of wild beasts, making a horrible slaughter.
At this moment Don Torribio, attacked by two tiger cats, rolled upon the platform struggling with both.
In a very short time the brutes were put to flight by the newcomers, who hastened to light fires to keep them at bay for the rest of the night.
Two of the men armed with burning torches of ocote wood, set themselves to search for the man whose cries of distress had brought them to his aid.
They were not long in finding him stretched out on the platform, surrounded by ten or twelve dead tiger cats, and clutching in his stiffened hands the throat of a strangled catamount.
"Well, Carlocho," exclaimed a voice, "have you found him?"
"Yes," replied the other; "but he seems dead."
"¡Caray!" resumed Pablito; "It would be a pity; for he was a bold fellow. Where is he?"
"There; on the rock opposite you."
"Can you let him down with the verado's help?"
"Nothing easier; he is as still as a log."
"Make haste, then, in the name of heaven!" said Pablito; "Every minute's delay may be a year's life stolen from him!"
Carlocho and the verado lifted Don Torribio by the feet and shoulders, and with infinite precaution carried him from the improvised fortress he had defended so bravely to one of the fires, and laid him on a bed of leaves prepared by El Zapote; for the four vaqueros were, by a strange chance, reunited in this spot.
"¡Canarios!" cried Pablito, at sight of the miserable man; "Poor devil! How they have mauled him! It was high time for help."
"Do you think he will recover?" asked Carlocho, with great interest.
"There is always hope," said Pablito dogmatically, "when the vital organs are uninjured. Let us look at him."
He bent over the body of Don Torribio, unsheathed his poniard, and put the blade to his lips.
"Not a sign of breath!". and he shook his head.
"Are his wounds serious?" asked the verado.
"I think not: he has fallen from fatigue and overexcitement."
"But in that case he may come round again?"
"Perhaps he may; perhaps he may not: all depends upon the greater or less violence of the shock to his nervous system."
"Ha!" exclaimed the verado joyfully; "Look here! He breathes. ¡Vive Dios! He has tried to open his eyes!"
"Then he is saved!" replied Pablito; "He will soon come to his senses. This man has a constitution of iron. He will be able to be in the saddle in a quarter of an hour, if he likes; but we must attend to his wounds."
The vaqueros, like the backwoodsmen, live far from inhabited places; and are obliged to be their own doctors; hence they acquire a certain practical knowledge of surgery, and are adepts in the collection and application of the herbs in use among the Indians.
Pablito, aided by Carlocho and the verado, bathed the wounds of Don Torribio, first with water, then with rum, and blew tobacco smoke into his nostrils.
The latter, after some minutes of this strange treatment, uttered a scarcely perceptible sigh, moved his lips slightly, and at last opened his eyes, which as yet had no consciousness in them.
"He is saved!" repeated Pablito; "Now let us leave nature to work: she is the best doctor I know."
Don Torribio raised himself up, supporting himself on one elbow, and passed his hand across his forehead, as if to recall his thoughts.
"Who are you?" he said in a feeble tone.
"Friends, señor; fear nothing."
"I am killed; my limbs are all broken."
"It is nothing to signify, señor; it is only fatigue: you are as well as we are?"
Don Torribio sat up and looked attentively at the men who surrounded him.
"I must be mistaken," said he; "I never expected to find you here. By what miracle did you reach me in time to save me? – you, whom I promised to meet at a rendezvous so far from the spot where we are?"
"It was your horse performed the miracle, señor," said the verado.
"How is that?" asked Don Torribio, whose voice grew stronger every moment, and who had already managed to stand up.
"The case is very simple. We were skirting the forest, on our road to the place you had pointed out to us, when suddenly a horse passed across us at a giddy speed, a pack of wolves at his heels. We soon relieved him from his incarnate foes. Then, as we thought it unlikely for a saddled horse to be all alone in a forest into which none dare venture, we set out in search of his rider. Your cry was our pilot."
"Thanks!" replied Don Torribio; "I shall know how to repay the debt I have contracted with you."
"Nonsense! That is not worth speaking