Nothing is to be seen but, at rare intervals, ironwood, gum, and Peru trees, with red and spicy clusters, nopales, and cactuses, the only trees that can possibly grow in a soil calcined by the incandescent rays of a perpendicular sun.
At distances are visible, as if in bitter derision, the long poles of cisterns, with a leathern bucket, twisted and shrivelled, at one extremity, and at the other stones fastened by straps; but the cisterns are dry, and the bottom of them is merely a black slimy crust, in which myriads of unclean animals disport; whirlwinds of a fine and impalpable dust, raised by the least breath of wind, choke the panting traveller, and under every blade of dried grass the grasshoppers call with fury for the beneficent night dews.
When, however, with great labour, the traveller has covered six leagues of this burning solitude, the eye reposes with delight upon a splendid oasis, which appears all at once to rise from the bosom of the sands.
This Eden is the Hacienda del Milagro.
At the time our history took place, this hacienda, one of the richest and largest in the province, was composed of a two storied house, built of tapia and adobes, with a terrace roof of reeds, covered with beaten earth.
Access to the hacienda was gained by passing through an immense court, the entrance of which shaped like an arched portico, was furnished with strong folding gates, and a postern on one side. Pour chambers completed the front; the windows had gratings of gilded iron, and shutters inside; they were glazed, an almost unheard-of luxury in that country at that time; on the four sides of the court, or patio, were the apartments for the peons and children, &c.
The ground floor of the principal house was composed of three apartments; a kind of grand vestibule furnished with antique fauteuils and canopies covered with stamped Cordovan leather, with a large nopal table and some stools; upon the walls hung, in gilded frames, several old full-length portraits, representing the members of the family; while the beams of the ceiling, left in relief, were decorated with a profusion of carvings.
Two folding doors opened into the saloon; the side in front of the patio was raised about a foot above the rest of the floor; it was covered by a carpet, and contained a row of curiously carved low stools ornamented with, crimson velvet, and cushions for the feet; there was also a little square table, eighteen inches high, serving as a work table. This portion of the saloon is reserved for the ladies, who there sit cross-legged, in the Moorish fashion; on the other side of the saloon were chairs covered with the same stuff as the stools and the cushions. Facing the entrance of the saloon was the principal bedchamber, with an alcove at the back of a daïs, upon which stood a bed of ceremony, ornamented with an infinity of gildings and brocade curtains, with tassels and fringes of gold and silver; the sheets and pillowcases were of the most beautiful linen, bordered with wide lace.
Behind the principal house was a second patio, in which were the kitchens and the corral; beyond this court was an immense garden, surrounded by walls, and more than a hundred perches in length, laid out in the English fashion, and containing the most remarkable exotic plants and trees.
It was holiday time at the hacienda.
It was the period of the matanza del ganado (slaughtering of cattle). The peons had formed, at a few paces from the hacienda, an enclosure, in which, after driving the beasts, they separated the lean from the fat, which they drove out, one by one, from the enclosure.
A vaquero, armed with a sharp instrument in the form of a crescent, furnished with points placed at the distance of a foot apart, and who was concealed behind the door of the enclosure, cut, with great address, the hamstrings of the poor beasts, as they passed before him.
If by chance he missed a stroke, which he rarely did, a second vaquero, mounted on horseback, galloped after the animal, threw the lasso round its horns, and held it till the first had succeeded in cutting its hamstrings.
Carelessly leaning against the portico of the hacienda, a man of about forty years of age, clothed in the rich costume of a gentleman farmer, his shoulders covered by a zarapé of brilliant colours, and his head protected from the rays of the setting sun by a fine hat of Panama straw, worth at least five hundred piastres, seemed to be presiding over this scene while enjoying a husk cigarette.
He was a gentleman of lofty bearing, slightly built, but perfectly well-proportioned, and his features well defined with firm and marked lines, denoted loyalty, courage, and, above all, an inflexible will. His large black eyes, shaded by thick eyebrows, displayed indescribable mildness; but when any contradictory chance spread a red glow over his embrowned complexion, his glance assumed a fixity and a force which few could support, and which made even the bravest hesitate and tremble.
His small hands and feet, and more than all, the aristocratic stamp impressed upon his person, denoted, at the first glance, that this man was of pure and noble Castilian race.
In fact, this personage was Don Ramón Garillas de Saavedra, the proprietor of the Hacienda del Milagro, which we have just described.
Don Ramón Garillas was descended from a Spanish family, the head of which had been one of the principal lieutenants of Cortez, and had settled in Mexico after the miraculous conquest of that clever adventurer.
Enjoying a princely fortune, but unnoticed by the Spanish authorities, on account of his marriage with a woman of mixed Aztec blood, he had given himself up entirely to the cultivation of his land, and the amelioration of his vast domains.
After seventeen years of marriage, he found himself the head of a large family, composed of six boys and three girls, in all nine children, of whom Rafaël – he whom we have seen so deftly kill the vaquero – was the eldest.
The marriage of Don Ramón and Doña Jesuita had been merely a marriage of convenience, contracted solely with a view to fortune, but which, notwithstanding, had rendered them comparatively happy; we say comparatively, because, as the girl only left her convent to be married, no love had ever existed between them, but its place had been almost as well occupied by a tender and sincere affection.
Doña Jesuita passed her time in the cares necessitated by her children, surrounded by her Indian women. On his side, her husband, completely absorbed by the duties of his life as a gentleman farmer, was almost always with his vaqueros, his peons, and his huntsmen, only seeing his wife for a few minutes at the hours of meals, and sometimes remaining months together absent in hunting excursions on the banks of the Rio Gila.
Nevertheless, we are bound to add that, whether absent or present, Don Ramón took the greatest care that nothing should be wanting for his wife's comfort; and in order that her least caprices might be satisfied, he spared neither money nor trouble to procure her all she appeared to desire.
Doña Jesuita was endowed with extraordinary beauty and angelic mildness; she appeared to have accepted, if not with joy, at least without any great pain, the kind of life to which her husband bad obliged her to submit; but in the depth of her large black languishing eye, in the paleness of her countenance, and, above all, in the shade of sadness which continually obscured her beautiful white brow, it was easy to divine that an ardent soul abode within that seducing statue, and that the heart, which was ignorant of itself, had turned all its feelings upon her children, whom she adored with all the virginal strength of maternal love, the most beautiful and the most holy of all loves.
As for Don Ramón, always good and anxious for his wife, whom he had never taken the pains to study, he had a right to believe her the happiest creature in the world, which, in fact, she became as soon as God made her a mother.
It was some minutes after sunset; the sky, by degrees, lost its purple tint, and grew rapidly darker; a few stars began to sparkle in the celestial vault, and the evening wind arose with a force that presaged for the night, one of those terrible storms which so often burst over these regions of the sun.
The mayoral, after having caused the rest of the ganado to be carefully shut up in the enclosure, assembled the vaqueros and the peons, and all directed their steps towards the hacienda, where the supper bell announced to them that the hour of rest was at length arrived.
As the major-domo passed the last, with a bow, before his master, the latter asked him:
"Well,