Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/215

Rh him to have our horses saddled at midnight, as I wished to avoid both Fuentes and the treacherous designs of Don Tomas.

"After this," said I, "we shall travel only at night; it is better for the health."

By traveling at night and sleeping during the day, I reasonably hoped to baffle all pursuit. However, grown bolder by success, I returned to my ordinary habits; and when I came to the venta of Arroyo Zarco, it was midday before I arrived, after having passed the night at San Juan del Rio, and journeying almost the whole day. In this last stage of my excursion many sorrowful remembrances crowded into my mind. The plain, the venta, alike reminded me of Don Jaime. It was while musing sadly on this young man, so prematurely cut off, that I found myself, almost without knowing it, at the very spot where he had lighted his fire. Of so many dreams of love and fortune, what was left behind? A corpse three hundred miles away, a few burned sticks, and some ashes which the winds of the plain were scattering about! The supper-hour approaching, I went to pass away an idle hour, if not at the common table, at least in a room where all the travelers, and they were numerous on that day, were generally accustomed to take their meals. The company consisted, as it had done before, of a curious mixture of all classes of Mexican society, but I had no end in view as I had then, and accordingly seated myself in a corner after looking around me with a careless eye. I thought for some time on the cruel isolation to which foreigners are subjected in those countries inhabited by people of Spanish extraction, when the hostess pronounced, almost at my ear, the name of a person that made me start.