Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 2.djvu/35

Rh this was only a momentary obstruction to his progress. With the speed of lightning he threw himself upon the cowering wretch; and placing one hand on his mouth to stifle his outcries, plunged his cuchillo twice up to the hilt in his back, between the shoulders. Then casting a heap of mats upon the fire to extinguish it, that the ruffians might not have the advantage of its light to guide them back, he unloosed his trusty mule from the wall; and emerging from the hut, drove the animal before him by a track which he had every reason to believe was but little known.

His superior knowledge of the country enabled him, even in the darkness, to make good way from the scene of his past peril; and he used every exertion to place as great a distance as possible between his outwitted enemies and himself. On he sped beside his patient mule, over the mountain paths, in the dead of night; the man profiting in no slight degree by the fine instinct of the animal, who seemed to understand the emergency, and to strain every limb for the preservation of his master. But even surefooted mules have occasionally been known to take a false step, and our arriero's beast stumbled over a projecting rock,