Since the period when, in the suite of that genial adventurer, Fernando Cortez, a Lopez de Luna had first put foot in America, the fortunes of this family, very poor and much reduced at that time for Don Lopez literally possessed nothing but his cloak and sword, the fortunes of this family, we say, had taken an incredible flight upwards, and entered on a career of prosperity that nothing in time's course could trammel. Thus Don Pedro de Luna, the actual representative of this ancient house, was in the enjoyment of wealth, the amount of which it would certainly have puzzled him to state, wealth which had been increased still more by the property of Don Antonio de Luna, his elder brother, who had disappeared more than twenty-five years after events to which we shall have to revert, and who it was supposed had perished miserably in the mysterious wilderness in the neighbourhood of the hacienda. It was likely that he had fallen a victim to the horrible pangs of hunger, or more probably into the hands of the Apaches, those implacable enemies of the whites, on whom they ceaselessly wage an inveterate war.
In short Don Pedro was the sole representative of his name, and his fortune was immense. No one who has not visited the interior of Mexico can figure to himself the riches buried in these almost unknown regions, where certain land owners, if they would only take the trouble to put their affairs in order, would find themselves five or six times more wealthy than the greatest capitalists of the old world.
Now, although everything seemed to smile on the opulent hacendero, and although, to the world that looks beyond the surface, he seemed to enjoy, with every appearance of reason, an unalloyed happiness, nevertheless the deep wrinkles channelled in the forehead of Don Pedro, the mournful severity of his face, and his gaze often turned to heaven with an expression of sombre despair, might give rise to the surmise that the life all thought so happy was secretly agitated by a profound sorrow, which the years, as they rolled on, augmented instead of solacing.
And what was the sorrow? What storms had troubled the course of a life so calm on the surface?
The Mexicans are the most forgetful people on earth. This certainly arises from the nature of their climate, which is incessantly distracted by the most frightful cataclysms. The Mexican, whose life is passed on a volcano, who feels the soil incessantly trembling under his feet, only cares to live for today. For him yesterday no longer exists; tomorrow he may never see the sun rise; today is his all, for today is his own.
The inhabitants of the Hacienda de las Norias, incessantly exposed to the inroads of their redoubtable neighbours the redskins, constantly occupied in defending themselves from their attacks and depredations, were still more forgetful than the rest of their countrymen of a past in which they took no interest.
The secret of Don Pedro's grief, if really such a secret existed, was, therefore, confined pretty nearly to his own breast; and as he never complained, never made allusion to the earlier years of his life, surmise was impossible, and the ignorance of everyone on the subject complete.
One single being had the privilege of smoothing the anxious brow of the hacendero, and of bringing a languid and fleeting smile to his lips.
It was his daughter. Doña Hermosa at sixteen was dazzlingly beautiful. The jet black arches of her brow, finely traced as with a pencil, enhanced the beauty of a forehead not too high and of a creamy white. Her large eyes, blue and pensive, contrasted harmoniously with hair of ebon hue, which curled about the delicate neck, and on which the sweet jasmines died away with pleasure.
Short, like all Spanish women of her race, her figure was slender but well knit. No smaller feet had ever pressed in the dance the greensward of Mexico; no more delicate hand ever ransacked the dahlias of a garden. Her walk, easy, like that of all Creoles, was a serpentine and undulating motion, full of grace and of salero, as they say in Andalusia.
This exquisite girl scattered mirth and joy over the hacienda, whose echoes from morning to night repeated lovingly the melodious modulations of her pellucid notes, the pure and fresh qualities of which made the birds die of envy as they hid themselves under the foliage of the puerta (open court).
Don Pedro idolised his daughter; he felt for her that passionate and boundless affection the immense power of which can only be understood by those who are fathers in the true sense of the word.
Hermosa, brought up at the hacienda, had only paid a few short visits, at long intervals, to the great centers of the Mexican Confederation. Their manners were entirely strange to her. Accustomed to lead the free and untrammelled life of a bird, and to express her thoughts aloud, her frankness and innocent simplicity were extreme, while her sweetness of temper made her adored by all the inhabitants of the hacienda, over whose welfare she watched with constant care.
Nevertheless, owing to the peculiar kind of education she had received, exposed on this distant frontier to the frequent sound of the frightful war whoop of the redskins, and to be present during horrible scenes of carnage, she had accustomed herself from an early age to look perils in the face, if not coldly, at all events with a courage and strength of mind scarcely to be expected in so delicate a child.
In conclusion, the influence she exercised over all who approached her was incomprehensible: it was impossible to know her without loving her, or without feeling a wish to lay down one's life for her.
On several occasions, in the attacks made on the hacienda by those ferocious plunderers of the desert the Apaches and Comanches, some wounded Indians had fallen into the hands of the Mexicans. Doña Hermosa, far from suffering these wretches to be maltreated, had ordered every care to be taken of them, and restored them to liberty as soon as their wounds were healed.
From this course of action it resulted that the redskins by degrees renounced their attacks upon the hacienda, and that the girl, attended by only one man with whom we shall soon make the reader acquainted unconcernedly took long rides in the wilderness, and often, carried away by the ardour of the chase, rambled off to a great distance from the hacienda; while the Indians who saw her pass not only abstained from injuring her, but laid no obstacles in her way. On the contrary, these primitive beings, having conceived a superstitious veneration for her, contrived, while remaining out of sight themselves, to remove from her path any dangers she might otherwise have encountered.
The redskins, with that natural tone of poetry which distinguishes them, had called her "the White Butterfly," so light and fragile did she seem to them as she bounded like a frightened fawn through the tall prairie grasses, which hardly bent under her weight.
One of her most favourite resting places in these excursions was a rancho, (a farm) seven or eight miles from the hacienda. The rancho, built in a charming situation and surrounded by fields well looked after and carefully cultivated, was inhabited by a woman of fifty and her son, a tall and handsome man of twenty-five or twenty-six with a proud eye and a warm heart, named Estevan Diaz. Na Manuela, as they called the old woman, and Estevan had an affection for the girl which knew no bounds. Manuela had nursed Hermosa when an infant, and the foster mother almost looked upon her young mistress as her own child, so deep was the love she bore her. The woman belonged to a class of domestics, now unhappily extinct in Europe, who form, as it were a part of the family, and are looked upon by their masters more as friends than servants.