“At last! At last!” said Luisa, taking me by the arm to lead me into the humble parlor. “It’s all of seven days! We have counted them one by one.”
The girls looked at me with mischievous smiles.
“Dear me,” exclaimed Luisa, observing me more closely, “how pale you are! That won’t do. If you would only come oftener it would fatten you up like anything.”
“And you, what do you think of me?” asked I of the girls.
“Why,” replied Tránsito, “what must we think of you if by staying off there studying—”
“We have had such lovely things for you,” interrupted Lucía. “We let the first melon of the new crop spoil, waiting for you; and last Thursday, thinking you were coming, we had such delicious cream for you—”
“What a cunning flatterer she is!” said José. “Ah, Luisa,” he added, “there’s good judgment for you! we don’t understand such things. But he had a good reason for not coming,” he went on, in a serious tone, “a good reason; and as you are soon going to invite him to spend a whole day with us—isn’t it so, Braulio?”
“Yes, yes, please let us talk about that. When will that great day come, Señora Luisa; when will it, Tránsito?”
She turned scarlet, and would not have lifted her eyes to look at her betrothed for all the gold in the world.
“It will be a good while yet,” answered Luisa. “Don’t you see that we must first get your little house whitewashed, and the doors hung? It will be the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, for she is Tránsito’s patron saint.”
“And when is that?”
“Don’t you know? Why, the twelfth of December. Haven’t these children told you that they want you to be their groomsman?”
“No, and I shall not pardon Tránsito for her delay in giving me such good news.”
“Well, I told Braulio that he ought to tell you, for my father used to say that was the way.”
“I thank you for choosing me more than you can imagine; and when the time comes I’ll serve as godfather too.”
Braulio cast a tender glance at his affianced, but she hastily went out, in her embarrassment, taking Lucía with her to prepare the breakfast.
My meals in José’s house were not like the one I described before; I was now but as one of the family, and without any table service, excepting the one knife and fork, which were always given to me, took my portion of beans, cornmeal mush, milk, and goat’s flesh from Luisa’s hands, seated, just as José and Braulio were, on a bench made of roots of the giant reed. Not without difficulty could I make them treat me in this way.
Once at sunset, years afterwards, journeying through the mountains of José’s country, I saw happy laborers reach the cabin where I used to enjoy hospitality. After grace was said by the aged head of the family, they waited around the fireside for the supper which the dear old mother passed to them; one plate sufficed for every married couple; the children frisked about the room. And I could not bear to look upon the patriarchal scene, which reminded me of the last happy days of my youth.
The breakfast was hearty, as usual, seasoned with a conversation which revealed the eagerness of José and Braulio to begin the hunt. It must have been ten o’clock when all at last were ready, Lucas carrying the hamper which Luisa had made ready for us; and after José’s repeated coming and going to collect and put in his great otter-skin pouch bunches of wadding and a variety of other things which had been forgotten, we set out.
There were five hunters—the mulatto Tiburcio, a peon from the Chagra hacienda, Lucas, José, Braulio, and I. We all had rifles; though those carried by Tiburcio and Lucas were flintlocks—most excellent, of course, according to their owners. José and Braulio carried lances also, with the blades very carefully set in the handles.
Not a single available dog stayed at home; leashed two and two, they swelled our expedition, whining with pleasure. Even the pet of Marta, the cook, Palomo, whom the very hares knew to be stone-blind, offered his neck to be counted among the able-bodied dogs; but José sent him away with a zumba! I followed by some mortifying reproaches.
Luisa and the girls stayed behind rather anxious, especially Tránsito, who well knew that her betrothed was going to run the greatest risk, since his fitness for the most dangerous post was indisputable.
Pursuing a narrow and difficult path, we began to go up the north bank of the river. Its sloping channel—if such could be called the wooded bottom of the gorge, spotted with rocks upon whose summits, as upon the roof of a house, grew curled ferns and reeds with flowering climbing plants twisted about them—was obstructed at intervals with enormous boulders, between which the current rushed swiftly, whitened with whirlpools and fantastic shapes of foam.
We had gone a little more than half a league, when José, pausing by the mouth of a broad chasm, dry and walled in by high cliffs, scrutinized some badly gnawed bones scattered over the sand; they were those of the lamb which had been thrown out the day before as bait to the fierce animal. With Braulio in advance, José and I went into the chasm up which the tracks led. Braulio, after going on about a hundred yards, paused, and without looking at us, motioned to us to stop. He listened to the murmurs of the forest; filled his chest with all the air it could possibly contain; looked up at the high arch formed above us by the cedars, and then went on with slow and noiseless steps. After a moment he paused again,
