The intelligent animal seemed to understand. It turned its head towards its master, and answered him with a plaintive neigh. The horseman, during this period, had been feeling in his girdle; and bending again over the horse,
"Mind and hold him tightly," he again recommended.
"What are you going to do?"
"Bleed him."
"Yes, that is it. I knew it; but unfortunately I did not dare risk doing it myself, through fear of killing the horse."
"All right?"
"Go on."
The horse made a hasty move, caused by the coldness of the wound; but its master held it down and checked its struggles. The two men suffered a moment of anxiety: the blood did not issue. At last a black drop appeared in the wound, then a second, speedily followed by a long jet of black and foaming blood.
"He is saved," the stranger said, as he wiped his lancet and returned it to his fob.
"I will repay you this, on the word of Belhumeur!" the owner of the horse said with much emotion. "You have rendered me one of those services which are never forgotten."
And, by an irresistible impulse, he held out his hand to the man who had so providentially crossed his path. The latter warmly returned the vigorous pressure. Henceforth all was arranged between them. These two men who a few moments previously were ignorant of each other's existence, were friends, attached by one of those services which in American countries possess an immense value.
The blood gradually lost its black tinge; it became vermillion, and flowed abundantly. The breathing of the panting steed had grown easy and regular. The first stranger made a copious bleeding, and when he considered the horse in a fair way of recovery he stopped the effusion.
"And now," he said, "what do you propose doing?"
"My faith, I don't know. Your help has been so useful to me that I should like to follow your advice."
"Where were you going when this accident occurred?"
"To the Rancho."
"I am going there too. We are only a few yards from it. You will get up behind me. We will lead your horse, and start when you please."
"I ask nothing better. You believe that my horse cannot carry me?"
"Perhaps he could do so, for he is a noble animal; but it would be imprudent, and you would run a risk of killing him. It would be better, believe me, to act as I suggested."
"Yes; but I am afraid "
"What of?" the other sharply interrupted him. "Are we not friends?"
"That is true. I accept."
The horse sprang up somewhat actively, and the two men who had met so strangely started at once, mounted on one horse. Twenty minutes later they reached the first buildings of the Rancho. At the entrance of the village the owner of the horse stopped, and turning to his companion, said,
"Where will you get down?"
"That is all the same to me; let us go first where you are going."
"Ah!" the horseman said, scratching his head, "the fact is, I am going nowhere in particular."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh! You will understand me in two words. I landed today at Guaymas; the Rancho is only the first station of a journey I meditate in the desert, and which will probably last a long time."
By the moonlight, a ray of which now played on the stranger's face, his companion attentively regarded his noble and pensive countenance, on which grief had already cut deep furrows.
"So that," he at length said, "any lodging will suit you?"
"A night is soon spent. I only ask a shelter for horse and self."
"Well, if you will permit me to act in my turn as guide, you shall have that within ten minutes."
"Agreed."
"I do not promise you a palace, but I will take you to a pulquería, where I am accustomed to put up when accident brings me to these parts. You will find the society rather mixed, but what would you have? And, as you said yourself, a night is soon spent."
"In Heaven's name, then, proceed."
Then, passing his arm through that of his comrade, the new guide seized the horse's reins, and steered to a house standing about two-thirds of the way down the street where they were, whose badly fitting windows gleamed in the night like the stoke holes of a furnace, while cries, laughter, songs, and the shrill sound of the jarabes, indicated that, if the rest of the pueblo were plunged in sleep, there, at least, people were awake.
The two strangers stopped before the door of this pothouse.
"Have you quite made up your mind?" the first said.
"Perfectly," the other answered.
The guide then rapped furiously at the worm-eaten door. It was long ere anyone answered. At length a hoarse voice shouted from inside, while the greatest silence succeeded, as if by enchantment, the noise that had hitherto prevailed.
"¿Quíen vive?"
"Gente de paz," the stranger replied.
"Hum!" the voice went on, "That is not a name. What sort of weather is it?"
"One for all all for one. The cormuel is strong enough to blow the horns off the oxen on the top of the Cerro del Huérfano."
The door was immediately opened, and the strangers entered. At first they could distinguish nothing through the thick and smoky atmosphere of the room, and walked hap-hazard. The companion of the first horseman was well known in this den; for the master of the house and several other persons eagerly collected round him.
"Caballeros," he said, pointing to the person who followed him, "this señor is my friend, and I must request your kindness for him."
"He shall be treated like yourself, Belhumeur," the host replied. "Your horses have been led to the corral, where a truss of alfalfa has been put before them. As for yourselves, the house belongs to you, and you can dispose of it as you please."
During this exchange of compliments the strangers had contrived to find their way through the crowd. They crossed the room, and sat down in a corner before a table on which the host himself placed pulque, mezcal, chinguirito, Catalonian refino, and sherry.
"Caramba, Señor Huesped!" the man whom we had heard called frequently Belhumeur, said with a laugh, "You are generous today."
"Do you not see that I have an angelito?" the other answered gravely.
"What, your son Pedrito ?"
"Is dead. I am trying to give my friends a cordial welcome, in order the better to feast the entrance into heaven of my poor boy, who, having never sinned, is an angel by the side of God."
"That's very proper," Belhumeur said, hobnobbing with the rather stoical parent.
The latter emptied his glass of refino at a draught, and withdrew. The strangers, by this time accustomed to the atmosphere in which they found themselves, began to look around them. The room of the pulquería offered them a most singular sight.
In the centre some ten individuals, with faces enough to hang them, covered with rags, and armed to the teeth, were furiously playing at monte. It was a strange fact, but one which did not appear to astonish any of the honourable gamblers that a long dagger was stuck in the table to the right of the banker, and two pistols lay on his left. A few steps further on, men and women, more than half intoxicated, were dancing and singing, with lubricious gestures and mad shouts, to the shrill sounds of two or three vihuelas and jarabes. In a corner of the room thirty people were assembled round a table, on which a child, four years of age at the most, was seated in a wicker chair. This child presided over the meeting. He was dressed in his best clothes, had a crown of flowers on his head, and a profusion of nosegays was piled up on the table all round him.
But alas! The child's brow was pale, his eyes glassy, his complexion leaden and marked with violet spots. His body had the peculiar stiffness of a corpse. He was dead. He was the angelito, whose entrance into heaven the worthy pulquero was celebrating.