Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/210

208 a great shout of laughter burst forth right above me. It was Fuentes indeed, who had come down to serve me as a guide, and play the part of the old miner. The extreme eagerness I had shown to get rid of him prompted him to this kind of revenge.

"Do you know, Señor Cavalier," he remarked, "that you are not easily frightened? In a situation such as would have tried the nerves of the bravest man, you did not even condescend to shout for help."

"Certainly not," I replied, with an impudence which surpassed his own; "you see you have only made yourself ridiculous by trying to frighten me."

The malacate now stopped; we had finished our ascent. Desiderio was first unloosed, and I waited my turn in feverish anxiety. When the strap which bound me to the cable had been untied, I could scarcely keep myself from fainting outright. I soon recovered my senses, however. I pressed the earth with a kind of rapture. Never had Nature seemed so beautiful, so resplendent, as on that day.

In the interval that passed while our horses were getting ready, Fuentes, who had resumed his gaudy dress, stood silently by, and I took care not to be the first to speak. My foot was already in the stirrup when an old man came up to me. I could scarcely recognize, in the person whose dress vied in richness with that of Fuentes, the old miner whom I had seen a few hours before kneeling at the altar.

"You will pardon me for having broken my word," said he to me; "but my work detained me longer than I expected. You must have heard the explosion in the mine: it took place not half an hour ago."

"True," I replied. "I have been also told a touching and very mournful story."