Stoneheart: A Romance

Hatred was crying aloud in his heart; nothing cooled his burning forehead; his temples beat as if they would burst, and nervous agitation shook him in every limb.

This state of overexcitement lasted many hours. His steed still continued to fly. At last the noble animal, worn out with fatigue, suddenly stopped and dropped upon the sand.

Don Torribio rose, and looked around him with a bewildered air.

A shock like this rude fall was necessary to restore order to his ideas, and recall him to reality. Another hour of such continued anguish would have made him raving mad, or ended in sudden apoplexy.

It was night. Thick darkness covered the earth; a mournful silence reigned over the wilderness to which chance had brought him.

"Where am I?" he exclaimed, endeavouring to make out his position.

But the moon, hidden by clouds, gave forth no ray; the wind began to roar like thunder; the branches of the trees crashed against each other, and, from the depths of the wilderness, the growlings of the wild beast began to mingle their deep notes with the sharper howling of the wild cats.

Don Torribio strained his eyes in vain efforts to penetrate the darkness around him. At last he approached his horse, which was stretched on the ground, and drawing its breath with difficulty. Moved with pity for the faithful companion of so many adventures, he stooped down, removed his pistols from the holsters to his belt, and taking from the saddle, where it was slung, a gourd filled with rum, began to wash the eyes, nostrils, and mouth of the panting animal. Half an hour's persistence seemed to restore life to the horse. He got on his legs, and, with his natural instinct, soon discovered a neighbouring rill, at which he slaked his thirst.

"All is not yet lost," muttered Don Torribio; "after all, I may make my escape hence."

But a deep roar resounded at a short distance, repeated immediately afterwards in four different directions.

The horse's coat stood on end; and Don Torribio felt a cold shudder run through his veins.

"Curse upon it!" he exclaimed; "I have stumbled upon a drinking place for panthers! What is to be done?"

He stooped, and found the confirmation of his fears in the footprints stamped in the muddy borders of the rill.

Just at this moment he saw, at ten paces from him, two eyes, glimmering like burning coals, fixed upon him with strange intensity.

Don Torribio was a man of well-tried courage. Many a time, before the eyes of his comrades, he had performed deeds of wonderful temerity; but now, alone in the darkness, and surrounded by savage animals, he felt himself overcome by deadly terror: his chest heaved, and his breath came and went with difficulty through his set teeth; a cold sweat broke out on his limbs, and he was on the point of dropping.

But this fit of terror did not last above a minute. By a violent effort of his will, he collected himself, and calling all his energy to his aid, prepared for a desperate struggle, in which he knew he must succumb; yet, preserving that instinct of self-preservation and hope which is seldom utterly extinguished in man, he determined to defend his life to the last moment.

Just then his horse, with a snort of horrible fear, bounded away, and made his escape on to the plain.

"So much the better," muttered Don Torribio; "perhaps the poor brute's speed may save him."

A frightful concert of yells and howling broke out in all parts of the forest at the flight of the horse, and mighty shadows, indistinguishable in the darkness, bounded past Don Torribio.

He smiled bitterly.

"Aha!" said he; "Shall I stand here to be devoured, without attempting to escape? ¡Vive Dios! It would be the act of a fool! Come, I am not eaten yet: I will go."

A violent gust of wind here cleared the heaven of clouds, and for some minutes the wan light of the moon lit up the wild spot, in which Don Torribio found himself.

A few paces off, the Rio del Norte ran between two steep banks; on all sides, and far away in the distance, the dense masses of the virgin forest extended themselves. A chaos of rocks piled on each other in inextricable confusion, from whose fissures rose clumps of trees overgrown with entangled creepers drooping in fantastic garlands, pushed its ramifications to the verge of the river; the soil, composed of sand and the detritus always abounding in the forests of America, crumbled under the footstep.

Then Don Torribio knew where he was: at least fifteen leagues from the nearest inhabited spot. He was entangled in the first spurs of an immense forest – the only one throughout the country of the Apaches which the hardy pioneers of civilization had not yet dared to explore, such mysterious horrors seemed concealed in its dark recesses.

Don Torribio took no pains to inquire how his headlong course had brought him to this dreaded region. Danger so frightful that it claimed the exertion of all his powers, hung too directly over his head for him to waste time in speculating on anything save the manner of extricating himself.

At this side, the limpid steam we have mentioned issued from a rock; its banks, impressed with numberless footprints of wild beasts, clearly indicating that the spot was a favourite drinking place, when, at sunset, they left their lairs to seek their food and quench their thirst. And as a further living proof of the fact, two magnificent jaguars, male and female, had at that very moment stopped at its border, and were watching with restless eyes the gambols of their young.

"So," said Don Torribio to himself, "here are pleasant neighbours;" and he mechanically cast his eyes on the other side.

An immense panther, crouched on a rock in the attitude of a cat on the watch, had fixed on him two eyeballs glowing like carbuncle.

Don Torribio, according to the custom in South America, never left home without his weapons. His carbine, of great price, was of remarkable accuracy, and by a providential chance, had not been broken when he fell with his horse. He had placed it as he rose against a rock beside him: he stretched out his arm, and seized it.

"Good!" said he, with a grim smile; "The struggle will cost them dear, at all events."

He shouldered the weapon; but at the moment he was about to fire, a plaintive caterwauling causing him to raise his eyes, he saw a dozen of catamounts and tiger cats of immense size perched in the branches above him, while a number of wolves crept stealthily up and dropped down in the bushes behind him. Poised on the summits of the surrounding rocks, a tribe of vultures, bald buzzards, and urubus, with half closed eyes, seemed to be expecting the moment to seize their share of the quarry.

With one bound, Don Torribio threw himself on to an angle of the rock, and from thence, by aid of his hands and knees, he contrived, in the course of a minute or two, to drag himself with enormous difficulty, to a kind of terrace, about twenty feet above the ground. Here he felt himself in comparative security for a time.

The horrible concert performed by the denizens of the forest, attracted one after another by the keenness of their scent, increased in volume with every minute, and had now reached such a pitch, that it drowned the roar of the wind which was raging through the ravines and clearings.

The moon had disappeared behind the clouds, and Don Torribio was once more enveloped in darkness. But if he could no longer distinguish the wild beasts, he knew they were there: he smelt their odour; he saw their eyes flashing through the obscurity; and their yells, nearing him more and more, made him feel that the last spark of hope would soon be extinguished for ever.

Firmly planting his feet on the ground and leaning a little forward to secure his aim, he drew a revolver, and fired six shots in rapid succession at the tiger cats. Six howls of agony, and the noise produced by falling from branch to branch, immediately followed. Six of the beasts were killed or wounded.

Nothing more horrible can be conceived than the uproar caused by this unexpected onslaught. The wolves threw themselves yelling on the victims, which they began to devour eagerly, disputing their booty with the vultures and zopilotes, who also claimed their share.

Suddenly there was a strange rustling amongst the leaves and branches of the trees. A body, of indistinguishable shape, shot through the air, and alighted growling on the platform. Don Torribio, clutching his rifle, dealt the animal a terrific blow with the butt on the skull, and the brute rolled howling from the top of the rock to the bottom.

And now his ears were stunned by the uproar arising from a dreadful combat, a few feet below him, between the jaguars and tiger cats on one side, and the panther which had attacked them. Fascinated by the terrible danger to which he was exposed, Don Torribio, forgetful of the evil consequences to him that might ensue, fired two pistol shots into the mass of foes tearing and rushing at each other's throats at his feet.

Thereupon a strange thing occurred: all these animals, natural enemies to each other, seemed to comprehend that it would be better to unite against man, their common foe, than waste their strength in strife among themselves. Suddenly ceasing from the terrible combat in which they were engaged, and abandoning, with one accord, the bloody and half-devoured bodies of the victims, they turned their rage in the direction of the rock on which Don Torribio seemed to set them at defiance, and attacked it in concert with terrific energy – leaping upon its excrescences, striving to hold on to them, and trying to escalade it on all sides at once.

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 of. Come! here is your horse; we can go as soon as you like."

Don Torribio held up his hand.

"Stay here," said he; "we shall find no more suitable place than this to discuss what we have got to say to each other."