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Show 74 WESTERN WILDS. up the mountains with the advance of the Season, they were in this hut at the time of our approach. It appeared that the rebound of my horse from the opposite bank had hurled me back into the bushes growing out from the side of the gorge some twenty feet down ; and thence by a succession of falls among the shrubby growth, I had reached the bottom sixty feet below, fearfully bruised and broken, but not mortally hurt. The Mexicans saw no way of descending except by making a long circuit, and seeing my horse crushed to jelly at the bot-tom, they concluded I was dead under him. Fortunately I was found by the Pueblo Gomez, and brought to the cabin. Had a Mexican found me " THE MEXICANS SAW NO WAY OF DESCENDING." " Had word gone to the hacienda, the command would have been prompt : ' Give him up ! " But she saw me first, and womanly pity sub-ordinated all other thoughts to that of saving me. In secret the medicine man of the nearest pueblo was brought to dress my wounds and bandage my broken limbs, and at the end of ten days I slowly struggled back to life and consciousness. Still the Mexican author-ities were ignorant of my existence. Should they learn it, what would be my fate? Perhaps to be honorably treated as a prisoner of Avar, perhaps to be murdered at sight. It would depend entirely on the first officer who took charge of me. So many are the castes among these people, and so great the difference between different clans, that with one the prisoner is treated as a guest, while by another he is butchered like a wild beast. But I was for the present safe, and in time took up the clew of my past life, and followed it down to the last moment of consciousness slowly, painfully, as the wounded hunter drags his bleeding limbs towards home, with many halts and stumblings. The old life was gone ; the new life had grown up with Dolores, for such, she told me, was her name. I seemed to have nothing I did not owe to her, and for the present it was enough to live and love. She taught me her language more perfectly, though we scarcely needed it ; and the days of convalescence passed as a brief dream. " At length I was able to leave the cabin, and, leaning upon the arm |
