Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/161

Rh of a gun-lock. Our horses could advance but slowly, owing to the rocks with which the bottom of the ravine was covered. I quickened my pace, however. All at once a flash burst forth over our heads, the whiz of a ball shot past our ears, and the report of a gun echoed through the ravine, accompanied by a dull sound, as if the ball had been flattened against the rocks.

"Ah! the scoundrel," cried a voice, which seemed to come from the top of the precipice, "I have missed him."

My first impulse was to close my eyes, in the expectation of hearing another report. An instant passed in terrible anxiety, during which the echoes reverberated among the rocks. I then raised my head to seek for the place from which the shot had been fired, but the fog lay so thick on the heights that I could distinguish nothing. A strip torn off the pennon of my lance, which was within two feet of my body, clearly proved that I had been aimed at.

"'Tis lucky I escaped that shot," said I to Cecilio; "but come, let us climb the rocks on both sides, and lay hold on the scoundrel who is seemingly so sorry that he has missed."

"But," cried Cecilio, who was not at all pleased with the task I had assigned him, "there is no indication whatever that they aimed at you; besides, I won't leave you. It is the duty of a good servant to be always at his master's side."

I gained the top of the rocks before him. As far as my range of vision extended, I saw nothing but the distant hills deeply bathed in violet, a few fields of maize whose heavy heads swung slowly backward and forward, and some deep gorges in the Sierra,