Mayne Reid - The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley

It was to the effect that he had fought Florence Kearney, and given more and worse wounds than he himself had received – enough of them, and sufficiently dangerous, to make it likely that his adversary would not long survive.

He did not say this to Luisa Valverde – only to her father. When she heard it second hand, it came nigh killing her. But then the informant had gone away – perhaps luckily for himself – and could not further be questioned. When met again in Mexico, months after, he told the same tale. He had no doubt, however, that his duelling adversary, so terribly gashed as to be in danger of dying, still lived. For an American paper which gave an account of the battle of Mier, had spoken of Captain Kearney in eulogistic terms, while not giving his name in the death list; this Santander had read. The presumption, therefore, was of Kearney being among the survivors.

Thus stood things in the city of Mexico at the time the Mier prisoners entered it, as relates to the persons who have so far found place in our story – Carlos Santander, a colonel on the staff of the Dictator; Don Ignacio Valverde, a Minister of State; his daughter, a reigning belle of society, with no aspirations therefor, but solely on account of her beauty; Florence Kearney, late Captain of the Texan filibusters, with Cris Rock, guide, scout, and general skirmisher of the same – these last shut up in a loathsome prison, one linked leg to leg with a robber, the other sharing the chain of a murderer, alike crooked in soul as in body!

That for the Texan prisoners there was yet greater degradation in store – one of them, Kearney, was made aware the moment after the gaol-governor had so unceremoniously shut the door of their cell. The teaching of Don Ignacio in New Orleans had not been thrown away upon him; and this, with the practice since accruing through conversation with the soldiers of their escort, had made him almost a master of the Spanish tongue.

Carlos Santander either did not think of this, or supposed the cloister door too thick to permit of speech in the ordinary tone passing through it. It did, notwithstanding; what he said outside to the governor reaching the Irishman’s ear, and giving him a yet closer clue to that hitherto enigma – the why he and Cris Rock had been cast into a common gaol, among the veriest and vilest of malefactors.

The words of Santander were —

“As you see, Señor Don Pedro, the two Tejanos are old acquaintances of mine. I met them not in Texas, but the United States – New Orleans – where we had certain relations; I need not particularise you. Only to say that both the gentlemen left me very much in their debt; and I now wish, above all things, to wipe out the score. I hope I may count upon you to help me!”

There could be no mistaking what he meant. Anything but a repayal of friendly services, in the way of gratitude; instead, an appeal to the gaol-governor to assist him in some scheme of vengeance. So the latter understood it, as evinced by his rejoinder —

“Of course you can, Señor Colonel. Only say what you wish done. Your commands are sufficient authority for me.”

“Well,” said Santander, after an interval apparently spent in considering, “as a first step, I wish you to give these gentlemen an airing in the street; not alone the Tejanos, but all four.”

“ Caspita !” exclaimed the governor, with a look of feigned surprise. “They ought to be thankful for that.”

“They won’t, however. Not likely; seeing their company, and the occupation I want them put at.”

“Which is?”

“A little job in the zancas !”

“In which street?”

“The Callé de Plateros. I observe that its stones are up.”

“And when?”

“To-morrow – at midday. Have them there before noon, and let them be kept until night, or, at all events, till the procession has passed. Do you quite understand me?”

“I think I do, Señor Colonel. About their jewellery – is that to be on?”

“Every link of it. I want them to be coupled, just as they are now – dwarf to giant, and the two grand gentlemen together.”

“ Bueno ! It shall be done.”

So closed the curious dialogue, or, if continued, what came after it did not reach the ears of Florence Kearney; they who conversed having sauntered off beyond his hearing. When he had translated what he heard to Cris Rock, the latter, like himself, was uncertain as to what it meant. Not so either of their prison companions, who had likewise listened to the conversation outside – both better comprehending it.

“ Bueno , indeed!” cried the dwarf, echoing the gaol-governor’s exclamation. “It shall be done. Which means that before this time to-morrow, we’ll all four of us be up to our middle in mud. Won’t that be nice? Ha! ha! ha!”

And the imp laughed, as though, instead of something repulsive, he expected a pleasure of the most enjoyable kind.

In the city of Mexico the houses are flat-roofed, the roof bearing the name of azotea . A parapetted wall, some three or four feet in height, runs all round to separate those of the adjacent houses from one another when they chance to be on the same level, and also prevent falling off. Privacy, besides, has to do with this protective screen; the azotea being a place of almost daily resort, if the weather be fine, and a favourite lounging place, where visitors are frequently received. This peculiarity in dwelling-house architecture has an oriental origin, and is still common among the Moors, as all round the Mediterranean. Strange enough, the Conquistadors found something very similar in the New World – conspicuously among the Mexicans – where the Aztecan houses were flat or terrace-topped. Examples yet exist in Northern and New Mexico, in the towns of the Pecos Zuñis, and Moquis. It is but natural, therefore, that the people who now call themselves Mexicans should have followed a pattern thus furnished them by their ancestry in both hemispheres.

Climate has much to do with this sort of roof, as regards its durability; no sharp frosts or heavy snows being there to affect it. Besides, in no country in the world is out-door life more enjoyable than in Mexico, the rainy months excepted; and in them the evenings are dry. Still another cause contributes to make the roof of a Mexican house a pleasant place of resort. Sea-coal and its smoke are things there unknown; indeed chimneys, if not altogether absent, are few and far between; such as there are being inconspicuous. In the siempre-verano (eternal spring) of Anahuac there is no call for them; a wood fire here and there kindled in some sitting-room being a luxury of a special kind, indulged in only by the very delicate or very rich. In the kitchens, charcoal is the commodity employed, and as this yields no visible sign, the outside atmosphere is preserved pure and cloudless as that which overhung the Hesperides.

A well-appointed azotea is provided with pots containing shrubs and evergreen plants; some even having small trees, as the orange, lime, camellia, ferns, and palms; while here and there one is conspicuous by a mirador (belvedere) arising high above the parapet to afford a better view of the surrounding country.

It would be difficult to find landscape more lovely, or more interesting, than that which surrounds the city of Mexico. Look in what direction one will, the eye is furnished with a feast. Plains, verdant and varied in tint, from the light green of the milpas (young maize), to the more sombre maguey plants, which, in large plantations (magueyals), occupy a considerable portion of the surface; fields of chili pepper and frijoles (kidney beans); here and there wide sheets of water between, glistening silver-like under the sun; bounding all a periphery of mountains, more than one of their summits white with never-melting snow – the grandest mountains, too, since they are the Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre or main Andean chain, which here parted by some Plutonic caprice, in its embrace the beautiful valley of Mexico, elevated more than seven thousand feet above the level of the sea.