"Caballero," the stranger answered, "you are really performing the part of Providence towards me and my sister, I know not, in truth, how to express to you the lively gratitude I feel for a procedure which is the more generous as I am a perfect stranger to you."
"Do you think so?" he answered sarcastically.
"The more I examine your face, the more convinced I am that I have met you tonight for the first time."
"You would not venture to affirm it?"
"Yes, I would. Your features are too remarkable for me not to remember them if I had seen you before; but I repeat, if you fancy you know me, you are mistaken, and an accidental resemblance to some other person is the cause of your error."
There was a momentary silence, and then the stranger spoke again, with a politeness too affected for the irony it concealed not to be seen —
"Be it so, Caballero," he answered, with a bow; "perhaps I am mistaken. Be good enough, therefore, if you have no objection, to tell me who you are, and by what fortuitous concourse of circumstances I have been enabled to render you what you are kind enough to call a great service?"
"And it is an immense one, in truth, Caballero," the stranger interrupted with warmth.
"I will not discuss that subject any longer with you, Caballero; I am awaiting your pleasure."
"Señor, I will not abuse your patience for long. My name is Don Ruiz de Moguer, and I reside with my father at a hacienda in the vicinity of Arispe. For reasons too lengthy to explain to you, and which would but slightly interest you, the presence of my sister (who has been at school for some years at the Convent of the Conception at El Rosario) became indispensable at the hacienda. By my father's orders I set out for El Rosario a few months ago, in order to bring my sister back to her family. I was anxious to rejoin my father; and hence, in spite of the observations made to me by persons acquainted with the dangers attending so long a journey through a desert country, I resolved to take no escort, but start for home merely accompanied by two peons, on whose courage and fidelity I could rely."
"My sister who had been separated from her family for several years, was as eager as myself to quit the convent; and hence we soon set out. For the first few days all went well; our journey was performed under the most favourable auspices, and my sister and I laughed at the anxiety and apprehensions of our friends, for we had begun to believe ourselves safe from any dangerous encounter."
"But yesterday at sunset, just as we were preparing our camp for the night, we were suddenly attacked by a party of bandits, who seemed to emerge from the ground in front of us, so unforeseen was their apparition. Our poor brave peons were killed while defending us; and my sister's horse, struck by a bullet in the head, threw her. But the brave girl, far from surrendering to the bandits, who rushed forward to seize her, began flying across the savannah. Then I tried to lead the aggressors off the scent, and induce them to pursue me. You know the rest, Caballero; and had it not been for your providential interference, it would have been all over with us."
There was a silence, which Don Ruiz was the first to break.
"Caballero," he said, "now that you know who I am, tell me the name of my saviour?"
"What good is that?" the stranger answered, sadly. "We have come together for a moment by chance, and shall separate tomorrow never to meet again. Gratitude is a heavy burden. Not knowing who I am, you will soon have forgotten me. Believe me, Señor Don Ruiz, it is better that it should be so. Who knows if you may not regret some day knowing me?"
"It is the second time you have said that, Caballero. Your words breathe a bitterness that pains me. You must have suffered very grievously for your thoughts to be so sad and your heart so disenchanted at an age when the future ordinarily appears so full of promise."
The stranger raised his head, and bent on his questioner a glance that seemed trying to read to the bottom of his soul: the latter continued, however, with some degree of vivacity —
"Oh! Do not mistake the meaning I attach to my words, Caballero. I have no intention to take your confidence by surprise, or encroach on your secrets. Every man's life belongs to himself – his actions concern himself alone; and I recognise no claim to a confidence which I neither expect nor desire. The only thing I ask of you is to tell me your name, that my sister and myself may retain it in our hearts."
"Why insist on so frivolous a matter?"
"I will answer – What reason have you to be so obstinate in remaining unknown?"
"Then you insist on my telling you my name?"
"Oh, Caballero, I have no right to insist; I only ask it."
"Very good," said the stranger, "you shall know my name; but I warn you that it will teach you nothing."
"Pardon me, Caballero," Don Ruiz remarked, with a touch of exquisite delicacy, "this name, repeated by me to my father, will tell him every hour in the day that it is to the man who bears it that he owes the life of his children, and a whole family will bless you."
In spite of himself, the stranger felt affected. By an instinctive movement he offered his hand to the young man, which the latter pressed affectionately. But, as if suddenly reproaching himself for yielding to his feelings, this strange man sharply drew back his hand, and reassuming the expression of sternness, which had for a moment departed from him, said, with a roughness in his voice that astonished and saddened the young Mexican, "You shall be satisfied."
We have said that Doña Marianita, in looking round her, fancied she saw the body of a man stretched on the ground a few paces from the fire. The maiden was not mistaken; it was really a man she saw, carefully gagged and bound. It was in a word, one of the two bandits who had pursued her so long, and the one whom the stranger had almost killed with a blow of his rifle butt.
After recommending Don Ruiz to be patient by a wave of his hand, the stranger rose, walked straight up to the bandit, threw him on his shoulders, and laid him at the feet of the young Mexican, perhaps rather roughly – for the pirate, in spite of the thorough Indian stoicism he affected, could not suppress a stifled yell of pain.
"Who is this man, and what do you purpose doing with him?" Don Ruiz asked, with some anxiety.
"This scoundrel," the stranger answered, harshly, "was one of the band that attacked you; we are going to try him."
"Try him?" the young gentleman objected; "We?"
"Of course," the stranger said, as he removed the bandit's gag, and unfastened the rope that bound his limbs. "Do you fancy that we are going to trouble ourselves with the scoundrel till we find a prison in which to place him, without counting the fact that, if we were so simple as to do so, the odds are about fifty to one that he would escape from us during the journey, and slip through our fingers like an opossum, to attack us a few hours later at the head of a fresh band of pirates of his own breed. No, no; that would be madness. When the snake is dead, the venom is dead, too; it is better to try him."
"But by what right can we constitute ourselves the judges of this man?"
"By what right?" the stranger exclaimed, in amazement. "The Border law, which says, 'Eye for eye; tooth for tooth.' Lynch law authorizes us to try this bandit, and when the sentence is pronounced, to execute it ourselves."
Don Ruiz reflected for a moment, during which the stranger looked at him aside with the most serious attention.
"That is possible," the young man at length answered; "perhaps you are right in speaking thus. This man is guilty – he is evidently a miserable assassin covered with blood; and, had my sister and myself fallen into his hands, he would not have hesitated to stab us, or blow out our brains."
"Well?" the stranger remarked.
"Well," the young man continued, with generous animation in his voice; "this certainly does not authorize us in taking justice into our own hands; besides, my sister is saved."
"Then it is your opinion – "
"That as