José went on to give the details of the expedition, meanwhile attending to the wounds of the dogs, and bewailing the loss of the three that had been killed. Braulio and Tiburcio wrapped up the skin.
The women went back to their tasks, and I took a nap in the little parlor on the bed which Tránsito and Lucía had improvised for me upon one of the benches. My lullaby was the murmur of the river, the cries of the geese, the lowing of the cattle pastured on the hills near by, and the songs of the girls washing clothes in the brook. Nature is the most loving of mothers when grief has taken possession of our souls; and if happiness is our lot, she smiles upon us.
XXI
The urgent invitation of the mountaineers induced me to stay with them till four in the afternoon, and then, after prolonged goodbyes, I started home in company with Braulio, who insisted upon going with me. He had relieved me of the weight of my rifle, and also carried a bag on his shoulder.
We had crossed the river, and were beginning to descend the broken flank of the mountain, when Juan Ángel, rising up in a clump of mulberry-trees, stretched out his hands to me in a supplicating attitude, and said, “I came, my master—I was going—but don’t punish me, your honor—and I won’t be afraid again.”
“What have you done—what is it?” I broke in. “Have they sent you from the house?”
“Yes, master, yes, the young lady; and as your honor said that I was to go back …”
I did not remember giving him any such command.
“So you didn’t return because you were scared?” asked Braulio, laughingly.
“That was it, that was the reason. But when Mayo ran by me in a great fright, and then Lucas met me as I was crossing the river, and said that the jaguar had killed Braulio …”
The young man gave a great burst of laughter, and then said to the frightened darky, “And you have been crouching like a rabbit in those briers all day?”
“Well, José shouted to me to get back quickly, because it wasn’t safe to go alone up there, and … and …”
Juan Ángel stood looking at his fingernails.
“Come, I’ll stand up for you,” said Braulio, “but only on condition that in the next hunt you are to go with me, step by step.”
The darky boy looked at him distrustfully, uncertain whether to accept a pardon on those terms.
“Do you agree?” asked I, indifferently.
“Yes, my master.”
“Well, let’s go on. Don’t take the trouble, Braulio, to go any farther with me; go back now.”
“But I wanted …”
“No; you know that Tránsito has been much frightened today. Remember me to her.”
“And this bag which I have—ah, you take it, Juan Ángel. Now, don’t you break your master’s rifle going down there; I owe my life to that. Well, that will be better,” he said, as I took the weapon myself.
I shook the bold hunter’s hand and we parted. When he was already quite a distance away, he shouted, “That in the bag is the sample of ore which your father asked my uncle to send him.”
Seeing that I heard him, he disappeared in the forest. I stopped at twice the distance of a gunshot from the house, on the bank of the brook, which rushed noisily down to lose itself in the garden. I looked about for Juan Ángel, but he had disappeared; I guessed that he was afraid I would be angry with him for his cowardice, and had resolved to seek a better defender than Braulio.
I was especially fond of the boy; he was then twelve years old, and was good looking—one might almost say, handsome. Though intelligent, he was rather intractable. Feliciana, his mother, who had been a nurse in the family, and enjoyed all the consideration attached to that position, always hoped he would turn out a good valet for me. But aside from service at the table and in the bedroom, and a certain skill in making coffee, he was clumsy and awkward.
When near the house I perceived that the family was still in the dining-room, and I inferred that Carlos and his father had come. I turned to the right, leaped over the garden wall, and gained my room without being seen. I was hanging up my hunting-bag and rifle when I noticed an unwonted loudness of conversation. At that very moment my mother came to my room and told me the cause.
“The M⸺s have come,” she said, “and you know that Don Jerónimo always talks as if he were trying to make himself heard across a river.”
Carlos in the house! I thought; this is the trying time of which my father spoke. Carlos must have had a whole day in which to admire the object of his love. How can I keep him from knowing that I love her? And I cannot tell her, either, that I will be her husband. This is a worse trial than I had imagined.
My mother, perhaps seeing that I was preoccupied, said to me, “So you’re come back unhappy?”
“No, Señora, only tired.”
“Did you have a good hunt?”
“Excellent.”
“Can I tell your father that you’ve got the bearskin for him?”
“Not that, but a lovely jaguar-skin.”
“A jaguar!”
“Yes, Señora, the one that did so much damage up here.”
“Why, this must have been dreadful.”
“My companions were very brave and skillful.”
She had arranged everything I needed for a bath and a change of clothes; just as she was closing the door I asked her not to say that I had returned.
She came back, and in that sweet and affectionate voice which always made her irresistible with me, said, “You remember,
