XXV
My mother was told of our plan of hunting, and had an early breakfast served for Carlos, Braulio, and me. It was all I could do to persuade the mountaineer to sit down at the table; he placed himself at the farthest remove from Carlos and me.
Naturally, we talked about the hunt. Carlos said: “Braulio maintains that my load is perfectly graduated; but he insists that my rifle is not as good as yours, though they are of the same make, and he himself fired with mine at a citron and put four slugs in it. Isn’t that so, my good fellow?” he concluded, addressing the mountaineer.
“I will wager,” replied he, “that the master can kill a pellar at seventy yards with that rifle.”
“Then we’ll see if I can’t kill a deer. How have you arranged the hunt?” he added, turning to me.
“The way we always do when we want to end the work near the house; Braulio is to go up to the foot of the landslide with his lively dogs; Juan Ángel is to stay in the ravine with two of the four dogs which I have ordered from Santa Elena; your servant with the other two will wait by the bank of the river, to prevent the game from getting away to the Novillera; you and I will be ready to go to the point where the deer comes out.”
Braulio thought the plan a good one, and after helping Juan Ángel saddle our horses, went away with him to take his part in the hunt. My black horse stamped impatiently on the pavement, anxious to display his powers; he arched his neck, delicate and lustrous as black satin, and snorted as he shook his wavy mane. Carlos was mounted on a roan Quito horse which General Flores had recently sent as a present to my father.
Mayo went with us as far as the first stream we had to ford; there he paused as if to meditate, and then went galloping straight back to the house.
“Listen!” said I to Carlos, after a half-hour had passed; “listen!”
The shouts of Braulio and the baying of the dogs proved that they had started a deer. The mountains reechoed; if the barking died out for short intervals, it was only to be renewed with greater fury and at a less distance.
A little later, Braulio came down by the unwooded side of the canyon. As soon as he reached Juan Ángel he loosened the two dogs from the leash, and held them for a few minutes, grasping them by the nape of the neck, until he was sure that the game was near the pass where we were; then he shouted at them encouragingly, and they disappeared like a flash.
Carlos, Juan Ángel, and I spread out over the slope. Soon we saw the deer, hard pushed by one of José’s dogs, coming down the canyon. Juan Ángel showed the whites of his eyes, and his broad laugh revealed every one of his fine teeth. Although I had ordered him to stay in the canyon, for fear the deer might go back into it, he crossed with Braulio the marshland and sandy stretches between us and the river. As the deer struck the bank of the stream, the dogs lost the scent, and he wheeled and went up instead of down.
Carlos and I dismounted, so as to aid Braulio. After losing more than an hour in running here and there, we heard at last the baying of a dog, which gave us hope that the track had been found again. But Carlos, as he floundered out of a swamp into which he had plunged, he knew not how or when, vowed that his stupid negro had let the game get down the river. Braulio, of whom we had lost sight for a short time, now shouted with such a powerful voice that we could hear him notwithstanding his great distance away: “There he goes! There he goes! Leave one with a rifle where you are. Come out into the open. The deer is going back to the ravine.”
Carlos’s servant was left where he was, and we two rushed to mount our horses. Just then the game emerged from the ravine, at a great distance from the dogs, and began to go down towards the house.
“Jump off!” I shouted to Carlos, “and wait for him as he comes round.”
He did so, and as the deer, already exhausted, made an effort to leap over the garden wall, fired at him. The deer kept on. Carlos stood still in amazement. Braulio now came up, and I leaped from my horse, throwing the reins to Juan Ángel.
From the house they could see all that had taken place. Don Jerónimo sallied out, rifle in hand, sprang over the railing of the corridor, and just as he was going to shoot at the animal, luckily caught his feet in the plants of a flowerbed, and fell, while my father was saying to him, “Be careful, be careful, they are all coming right there.”
Braulio followed close on the deer, keeping off the dogs. The frightened and trembling animal ran into the corridor, and lay down almost breathless under one of the sofas; Braulio was dragging him out when I came up with Carlos. The hunt had been amusing to me; but he was vainly trying to hide the mortification he felt at having missed so easy a shot.
Emma and María came out timidly to touch the young buck, begging not to have him killed. He seemed to understand that they were interceding for him, as he looked at them with swimming and frightened eyes, moaning softly. It was resolved to spare his life, and Braulio set about tethering
