“My horse! where is my horse?” then exclaimed Andrés with a voice hoarse and stifled by emotion, as he saw the stall empty and the halter broken.
He dashes thence like a madman; he calls his wife,--no answer; his servants,--nothing. Beside himself, he rushes over the whole house,--vacant, abandoned. Again he goes out to the street, sees the hoof-marks of his horse, his own,--no doubt of it,--for he knows, or thinks he knows, even the tracks of his cherished animal.
“I understand it all,” he says, as if illumined by a sudden idea. “The robbers have taken advantage of my absence to accomplish their design, and they are carrying off my wife to exact of me for her ransom a great sum of money. Money! my blood, my soul’s salvation, would I give for her.--My poor dog!” he exclaims, returning to look at him, and then he starts forth running like a man out of his wits, following the direction of the hoof-prints.
And he ran, he ran without resting for an instant after those tracks; one hour, two, three.
“Have you seen,” he asked of everybody, “a man on horseback with a woman on the crupper?”
And Andrés would gather fresh force and keep on running.
The night commenced to fall. To the same question he had ever the same reply; and he ran, and he ran, until at last he discerned a village, and near the entrance, at the foot of a cross which marked the point where the road divided into two, he saw a group of people, laborers, old men, boys, who were regarding with curiosity something that he could not distinguish.
He arrives, puts the same question as ever, and one of the group says:
“Yes, we have had sight of that pair; look! for a clearer trace see the horse that carried them, who fell here ruptured with running.”
Andrés turns his eyes in the direction they indicated, and indeed sees his horse, his beloved horse, which some men of the place were preparing to flay for the sake of its hide. He could scarcely resist his grief, but recovering himself, he turned again to the thought of his wife.
“And tell me,” he exclaimed impetuously; “how you failed to render aid to that woman in distress.”
“And didn’t we aid her!” said another of the circle. “Didn’t I sell them another saddle-horse so that they might press on their way with all the speed that seemed so important to them!”