The Border Rifles Part 35

"The person of whom you speak, if you mean the young lady to whom this house belongs--"

"Yes."

"Well! she is not here."

The Chief gave him a searching glance.

"The Paleface lies," he said.

"Look for her."

"She was here an hour ago."

"That is possible."

"Where is she?"

"Look."

"The Paleface is a dog whose scalp I will raise."

"Much good may it do you," the half-breed answered with a grin.

Unfortunately, while uttering these words, Lanzi gave a triumphant glance in the direction of the corral; the Chief caught it, rushed to the door, and uttered a yell of disappointment on seeing the hole in the palisade; the truth flashed upon him.

"Dog!" he yelled, and drawing his scalping knife, he hurled it furiously at his enemy.

But the latter, who was watching him, dodged the missile, which struck into the wall a few inches from his head.

Lanzi leaped over the bar, and rushed at Blue-fox.

The Indians rose tumultuously, and seizing their arms, bounded like wild beasts in pursuit of the half-breed.

The latter, on reaching the door of the corral, turned, fired his pistols among the crowd, leapt on his horse, and burying his spurs in its flanks, forced it to leap through the breach.

At the same moment a horrible noise was heard behind him, the earth trembled, and a confused ma.s.s of stones, beams, and fragments of every description fell around the rider and his horse, which was maddened with terror.

The Venta del Potrero was blown into the air, burying beneath its ruins the Apaches who had invaded it.

Such was the trick Lanzi had promised himself to play on the Indians.

We can now understand why he had insisted on Carmela setting off at full speed.

By a singular piece of good fortune, neither the half-breed nor his horse was wounded; the mustang, with foaming nostrils, flew over the prairie as if winged, incessantly urged on by its rider, who excited it with spur and force, for he fancied he could hear behind him the gallop of another horse in pursuit.

Unluckily the night was too dark for him to a.s.sure himself whether he were mistaken.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CHASE.

The reader will probably consider that the means employed by Lanzi to get rid of the Indians were somewhat violent, and that he should not have had recourse to them save in the utmost extremity.

The justification of the half-breed is as simple as it is easy to give; the Indian braves, when they cross the Mexican border, indulge mercilessly in every possible riot, displaying the greatest cruelty toward the unhappy white men who fall into their hands, and for whom they testify a hatred which nothing can a.s.suage.

Lanzi's position, alone, without help to expect from anyone, in an isolated spot, in the power of some fifty demons without faith or law, was most critical; the more so, as the Apaches, once they had been excited by strong liquors, the abuse of which causes them a species of raving madness, would no longer have recognized any restraint; their sanguinary character would have regained the upper hand, and they would have indulged in the most unjustifiable cruelty, for the mere pleasure of making an enemy of their race suffer.

The half-breed had, besides, peremptory reasons for behaving thus; he must, at all risks, ensure Carmela's safety, whom he had solemnly sworn to Tranquil to defend, even at the peril of his own life.

In the present case, he knew that his life or death depended solely on the caprice of the Indians, and hence he was quite reckless.

Lanzi was a cold, positive, and methodical man, who never acted till he had previously fully weighed the chances of success or failure. Under present circ.u.mstances, the half-breed ran no risk, for he knew that he was condemned by the Indians beforehand; if his plan succeeded, he might possibly escape; if not, he could die, but as a brave borderer should do, taking with him into the tomb a considerable number of his implacable foes.

His resolution once formed, it was carried out with the coolness we have described, and, thanks to his presence of mind, he had found time to leap on his horse and fly.

Still, all was not finished yet, and the galloping the half-breed heard behind him disturbed him greatly, by proving to him that his plan had not succeeded so well as he hoped, and that one of his enemies, at any rate, had escaped, and was on his track.

The half-breed redoubled his speed; he made his horse swerve from the straight line incessantly, in order to throw out his obstinate pursuer; but everything was of no avail, and still he heard him galloping behind him.

However brave a man may be, however great the energy is with which heaven has endowed him, nothing affects his courage so much as to feel himself menaced in the darkness by an invisible and una.s.sailable foe; the obscurity of night, the silence that broods over the desert, the trees which in his mad race defile on his right and left like a legion of gloomy and threatening phantoms--all this combines to heighten the terrors of the hapless man who dashes along under the impression of a nightmare which is the more horrible, because he is conscious of danger, and knows not how to exorcise it.

Lanzi, with frowning brow, quivering lips, and forehead bathed with cold perspiration, rode thus for several hours across country, bowed over his horse's neck, following no settled course, but constantly pursued by the dry, sharp sound of the horse galloping after him.

Strangely enough, since he first heard this gallop, it had not appeared to draw any nearer; it might be thought that the strange horseman, satisfied with following the trail of the man he pursued, was not desirous of catching him up.

By degrees the half-breed's excitement calmed: the cold night air restored a little order to his ideas, his coolness returned, and with it the necessary clearness to judge of his position soundly.

Lanzi was ashamed of this puerile terror, so unworthy of a man like himself, which had for so long, through a selfish feeling, caused him to forget the sacred duty he had taken on himself, of protecting and defending at the peril of his life his friend's daughter.

At this thought, which struck him like a thunder-bolt, a burning blush flushed his face, a flash darted from his eyes, and he stopped his horse short, resolved on finis.h.i.+ng once for all with his pursuer.

The horse, suddenly arrested in its stride, uttered a snort of pain, and remained motionless, at the same instant the galloping of the invisible steed ceased to be heard.

"Hilloah!" the half-breed muttered, "This is beginning to look ugly."

And drawing a pistol from his belt, he set the hammer. He immediately heard, like a funeral echo, the sharp sound of another hammer being set by his adversary.

Still, this sound, instead of increasing the half-breed's apprehensions, seemed, on the contrary, to calm them.

"What is the meaning of that?" he asked himself, mentally, as he shook his head, "Can I be mistaken? have I not to deal with an Apache?"

After this aside, during which Lanzi sought in vain to distinguish his unknown foe, he shouted in a loud voice:--

"Hilloah, who are you?"