Chapter 12 - Page 2

it fell back, and when she kissed his lips he was
already dead. His glazed eyes stared at the sky, on which pink clouds
floated very high. But I noticed the eyelids of the child, pressed to
its mother's breast, droop and close slowly. She had gone to sleep.

"The widow of Gaspar Ruiz, the strong man, allowed me to lead her away
without shedding a tear.

"For travelling we had arranged for her a side-saddle very much like a
chair, with a board swung beneath to rest her feet on. And the first
day she rode without uttering a word, and hardly for one moment
turning her eyes away from the little girl, whom she held on her
knees. At our first camp I saw her during the night walking about,
rocking the child in her arms and gazing down at it by the light of
the moon. After we had started on our second day's march she asked me
how soon we should come to the first village of the inhabited country.

"I said we should be there about noon.

"'And will there be women there?' she inquired.

"I told her that it was a large village. 'There will be men and women
there, senora,' I said, 'whose hearts shall be made glad by the news
that all the unrest and war is over now.'

"'Yes, it is all over now,' she repeated. Then, after a time: 'senor
officer, what will your Government do with me?'

"'I do not know, senora,' I said. 'They will treat you well, no
doubt. We republicans are not savages, and take no vengeance on
women.'

"She gave me a look at the word 'republicans' which I imagined full of
undying hate. But an hour or so afterwards, as we drew up to let the
baggage mules go first along a narrow path skirting a precipice, she
looked at me with such a white, troubled face that I felt a great pity
for her.

"'Senor officer,' she said, 'I am weak, I tremble. It is an
insensate fear.' And indeed her lips did tremble, while she tried to
smile glancing at the beginning of the narrow path which was not so
dangerous after all. 'I am afraid I shall drop the child. Gaspar saved
your life, you remember. . . . Take her from me.'

"I took the child out of her extended arms. 'Shut your eyes, senora,
and trust to your mule,' I recommended.

"She did so, and with her pallor and her wasted thin face she looked
deathlike. At a turn of the path, where a great crag of purple
porphyry closes the view of the lowlands, I saw her open her eyes. I
rode just behind her holding the little girl with my right arm. 'The
child is all right,' I cried encouragingly.

"'Yes,' she answered faintly; and then, to my intense terror, I saw
her stand up on the footrest, staring horribly, and throw herself
forward into the chasm on our right.