"Well, I thought I was right," said Fuentes. "It is my friend Planillas; but what the devil is he doing there?"
At the name of Planillas I shuddered involuntarily, and, preceded by Fuentes, made my way directly to the place where the man was seated on the mule. I hoped to obtain some information from the friend of Don Tomas Verduzco as to the part the bravo had played in the murder of my friend Don Jaime. Planillas, his elbows on his knees, and his head on his hands, appeared overwhelmed by violent grief. The noise of our approach drew him at last from his abstraction, and he looked up at us, but with an expression of uneasiness rather than of sorrow.
"Ah! señores," cried he, "in me you behold the most miserable man in all New Spain."
"You are doubtless thinking," I replied, "of the young cavalier whom Don Tomas assassinated two days ago, and whose blood is on your head, since you might have saved his life by stopping the hand of your friend--of that Don Tomas who had been paid to kill him, you told me."
"Did I say that?" cried Florencio; "then, by the life of my mother, I lied. I am a terrible liar when in drink; and you know, Señor Cavalier, I had drunk a great deal that day."
Florencio paused, visibly embarrassed. Fuentes thereupon asked him why he was in such a state of grief when we came up, and why he persisted in taking the carcass of a mule for a seat.
"This mule is the cause of my sorrow," replied Planillas. "Although I was tenderly attached to her, I had sold her in my misery to the hacienda de platas you see in the valley below. I got employment in the work-shops to be near her; but, alas! the poor beast died this morning, and I have dragged her to this lonely place in order to mourn over her undisturbed."
Planillas again plunged his head between his hands with the air of a man who will not be consoled; then, doubtless, to turn the conversation, "Ah! Señor Cavalier," he said, "that is not my only misfortune. Yesterday a fight took place between the miners of Rayas and those of Mellado, and I was not there."
"Nothing unfortunate!" vociferated Planillas. "Ah! it was not one of those vulgar encounters that one sees every day; and you would never guess how it terminated--by a shower of piastres which the miners of Mellado poured upon their adversaries to prove the superiority of their mine. Ah! the beautiful eagle piastres!" he added, with a broken-hearted air; "and I was too late in the field."