Ruiz

“ Ruiz vehemently denied his guilt, yet hesitated to make promises which, whether kept or broken, might make still more dubious his future position. Reyes read his mind, and at length said coolly,—
“The fact is, you have been bred a servant of Ramirez. When I swore the service of my life to him, yours went with it. You are the one creature in the world he has never met with a frown or given a harsh word to; but do you think he will spare you for that? No; if you should fall into his hands as a traitor, which sooner or later you would be sure to do, you would be shot! ”

“ But the sergeant, after shrugging his meagre shoulders once, paid no further attention to the deep murmuring voice at his back. It was indeed strange that Gaspar Ruiz should desert. His people were in too humble a station to feel much the disadvantages of any form of government. There was no reason why Gaspar Ruiz should wish to uphold in his own person the rule of the King of Spain. Neither had he been anxious to exert himself for its subversion. He had joined the side of Independence in an extremely reasonable and natural manner. ”

“ They all laughed, holding their sides, except the sergeant, who was gloomy and morose. He was afraid the prisoners would rise and break out—which would have been a bad example. But there was no fear of that, and I stood myself before the window with my drawn sword. When sufficiently tamed by the strength of Gaspar Ruiz, they came up one by one, stretching their necks and presenting their lips to the edge of the bucket which the strong man tilted towards them from his knees with an extraordinary air of charity, gentleness and compassion. ”

“ The others, both his own men and Tafur’s, stared at him for a space, stricken dumb with wonder and reverence for him. Then Ruiz broke loose from the group amidst which he stood, and saying simply: “Señor Capitan, if none other follow you, I will!” walked across the line. Close following him came Pedro de Candia with his drawn sword across his shoulder, marching in silence like a soldier at parade. Then Alonso de Molina, who crossed himself and said—
“God must be with such a man as that. Come, comrades, yonder is the only road for a brave man!” ”

“ The prisoners crowded towards the window, begging their guards for a drop of water; but the soldiers remained lying in indolent attitudes wherever there was a little shade under a wall, while the sentry sat with his back against the door smoking a cigarette, and raising his eyebrows philosophically from time to time. Gaspar Ruiz had pushed his way to the window with irresistible force. His capacious chest needed more air than the others; his big face, resting with its chin on the ledge, pressed close to the bars, seemed to support the other faces crowding up for breath. ”

“ Although he allowed nothing to be visible, Don Ruiz was vexed at heart with the affectation the hunter seemed to display in avoiding him, and escaping from his thanks. This savageness in a man to whom he owed such serious obligations appeared to him to conceal either a disguised enmity, or dark schemes whose accomplishment he feared, though he could not assign any plausible motive for them, especially after the manner in which the hunter had not hesitated on two occasions to imperil his life in assisting himself and his sister. ”

“ My general approached Gaspar Ruiz, who stood motionless as a statue above the girl. He let himself be shaken by the shoulder without detaching his eyes from her face.
“‘Que guape!’ shouted the general in his ear. ‘You are the bravest man living. You have saved my life. I am General Robles. Come to my quarters to-morrow, if God gives us the grace to see another day.’
“He never stirred—as if deaf, without feeling, insensible.
“We rode away for the town, full of our relations, of our friends, of whose fate we hardly dared to think. The soldiers ran by the side of our horses. ”

“ But well was Rosario convinced that though Ruiz held daily conferences with her father, and even once or more was honored by a few moments’ speech with Doña Isabel, it was not of her or of love that they spoke; and with a philosophic determination to replace with a more faithful lover the fickle admirer whom she could cease to love but would never forgive, the piqued, but lightly wounded damsel began to turn a shoulder upon the recreant soldier and her smiles upon the stranger. ”

“ That benevolent appearance was of course the effect of his care in not spilling the water and of his attitude as he sat on the sill; for, if a man lingered with his lips glued to the rim of the bucket after Gaspar Ruiz had said ‘You have had enough,’ there would be no tenderness or mercy in the shove of the foot which would send him groaning and doubled up far into the interior of the prison, where he would knock down two or three others before he fell himself. ”

“ All her old distrust of him, which he had so skilfully lulled, returned with overwhelming force, and in her unfounded suspicion she included the more just one of treason to her purposes to the cause of liberty and to Gonzales, and with irresistible certainty became convinced that the delays and detours which Ruiz had made had been expedients of traitorous policy. In the few moments needed for the completion of her toilet, a terrible fear took possession of her. For the first time that night she had been separated from the main body of the troops,—what if she were abandoned! ”

“ The sergeant recognised him by his stature, and being himself a very small man, looked with envy and contempt at the prostration of so much strength. He had always disliked that particular soldier. Moved by an obscure animosity, he inflicted a long gash across the neck of Gaspar Ruiz, with some vague notion of making sure of that strong man’s death, as if a powerful physique were more able to resist the bullets. For the sergeant had no doubt that Gaspar Ruiz had been shot through in many places. ”

“ From these unsuspecting natives he learned that in their fields fed flocks of the animals which yielded their wool, whilst gold and silver abounded in their country. Ruiz, not being less unscrupulous than his fellows, detained some of the natives to repeat and exemplify these wonders, and, by learning Spanish, to qualify themselves as interpreters. The barque having been allowed to proceed on its voyage, Ruiz advanced southwards, and was the first European who crossed the line on the Pacific Ocean. Having reached the Punta de Pasado, he retraced his way and rejoined Pizarro. ”

“ The stoical man at the head of the table smiled faintly at the storm of applause that followed this speech, and as Ruiz a few minutes later took his departure Juarez muttered to his neighbor, “That young fellow will bear watching. He has either a tremendous personal wrong to avenge, or he is striving to mislead us. I know him to be the godson of this very Ramirez, whom he thunders against. A Mexican may turn against, may even murder, his own father; but his godfather,—he must be a renegade indeed to attempt his destruction!” ”

“ Before anybody could make a sound he sprang up from the ground and called for his horse. ‘Adios, my friends!’ he cried, ‘Go with God. I love you. And tell them well in Santiago that between Gaspar Ruiz, colonel of the King of Spain, and the republican carrion-crows of Chile there is war to the last breath—war! war! war!’
“With a great yell of ‘War! war! war!’ which his escort took up, they rode away, and the sound of hoofs and of voices died out in the distance between the slopes of the hills.
“The two young English officers were convinced that Ruiz was mad. ”

“ The murmurs that arose at General Robles' words were by no means unanimous in tone. But the generous and brave San Martin praised the humane action, and pointed out to Ruiz a place on his right hand. Then rising with a full glass he proposed a toast: 'Caballeros and comrades-in-arms, let us drink the health of Captain Gaspar Ruiz.' And when we had emptied our glasses: 'I intend,' the Commander-in Chief continued, 'to entrust him with the guardianship of our southern frontier, while we go afar to liberate our brethren in Peru. ”

“ When his eyes fell upon the youth, a frown which darkened as with a palpable cloud his already rigid and pitiless face, overspread the countenance of Ramirez and made it absolutely terrible. Even to fallen angels the crime of ingratitude may seem the one damnable offence. In Ruiz, remembering the love and favor he had shown him, Ramirez held it so to be. This insignificant boy had compassed his ruin; his life seemed too poor a forfeit to condone the offence. The baffled, desperate, outraged chieftain cursed the fate which had cast the treacherous favorite into his power. ”

“ A man of straw, who though answering a purpose for the time could create no diversion of devotion to his own person in detriment to the supremacy of Gonzales, was sought and found in Ruiz. He was indeed the simple tool of Doña Isabel Garcia, manipulated by her administrador, yet so skilfully that he came to think himself the moving power which from an isolated farmhouse had within a few days changed Los Tres Hermanos into a military camp. ”

“ He whom the enemy could not stop from striking a blow at his very heart will know how to protect the peaceful populations we leave behind us to pursue our sacred task.’ And he embraced the silent Gaspar Ruiz by his side. ”

“ What could such a vagabond have to do with the Señora Garcia’s protégée? He would serve when the time came, to make one, in the independent troop he, Fernando, would raise: such worms as he were only fit to serve men. There were wild rumors afloat of the wonderful fortune of that phœnix Benito Juarez. What if he, Ruiz, should join his standard? There was a strange fire and exultation in the young man’s veins. He had been tied to a resistless fate long enough,—he would break his trammels, and by one daring act free himself forever from control, from tutelage, from Ramirez. ”

“ Ruiz insisted on his idea. In the middle of the eighteenth century when Spain retired within herself, renouncing distant wars, and new colonizations, and when religious cruelty languished for lack of atmosphere, then was the time when bull-fighting flourished forth. Popular heroism needed new heights to scale for notoriety and fortune. ”

“ For in one essential, as in no others, was Ruiz Rios a man after Jim Kendric's own heart: the Mexican was a man to play for any stake and do no moralizing over the result.
"Ortega," cried Kendric, looking all the time challengingly at Rios, "there is only one game worth the playing. King of games? The emperor of games! Have you a man here to shake dice with me?" ”

“ She had asked the strange man on the door-step, “Who wounded you?”
“The soldiers, senora,” Gaspar Ruiz had answered, in a faint voice.
“Patriots?”
“Si.”
“What for?”
“Deserter,” he gasped, leaning against the wall under the scrutiny of her black eyes. “I was left for dead over there.”
She led him through the house out to a small hut of clay and reeds, lost in the long grass of the overgrown orchard. He sank on a heap of maize straw in a corner, and sighed profoundly.
“No one will look for you here,” she said, looking down at him. “Nobody comes near us. ”

“ The sergeant made as if to cry out, but astonishment deprived him of his voice, and he remained standing with his mouth open as if overtaken by sudden imbecility.
“I sheathed my sword and faced the soldiers. An air of awestruck expectation had replaced their usual listless apathy. I heard the voice of Gaspar Ruiz shouting inside, but the words I could not make out plainly. I suppose that to see him with his arms free augmented the influence of his strength: I mean by this, the spiritual influence that with ignorant people attaches to an exceptional degree of bodily vigour. ”

“ The sergeant, without deigning to look at the prisoner, addressed himself to the young officer with a superior smile.
“Ten men would not have been enough to make him a prisoner, mi teniente. Moreover, the other three rejoined the detachment after dark. Why should he, unwounded and the strongest of them all, have failed to do so?”
“My strength is as nothing against a mounted man with a lasso,” Gaspar Ruiz protested eagerly. ”

“ At the hour for retiring, Don Ruiz, more than ever eager to rejoin his father, reminded the Captain of the offer of service he had made him, and asked for an escort, in order to continue his journey on the morrow; but Don Marcos answered with a peremptory refusal, that not only would he give no escort, but he insisted on his relations remaining temporarily under his guard.
Don Ruiz naturally asked an explanation of his cousin; which he did not hesitate to give, by telling them of the conversation between himself and the hunter. ”

“ Ruiz said.
"Perchance he thought of that when he dared show himself in the plaza."
"Moreover, he is one of his excellency's closest friends. To quarrel with him may go hard with you."
"Yet there must be some justice, even in such a governor as this we have. This is the year fifteen hundred and fifteen, my friend, an enlightened age."
"I pick no quarrel with the age, Bartolmeo. But there be men living in it—"
"Who should cease to live—I agree with you!"
"You'd not dare—"
"The pretty caballero has gone too far, I vow. Lying braggart, eh? ”

“ And now, having been captured arms in hand amongst Royalists, he could expect no other fate but to be shot as a deserter.
Gaspar Ruiz, however, was not a deserter; his mind was hardly active enough to take a discriminating view of the advantages or perils of treachery. Why should he change sides? He had really been made a prisoner, had suffered ill-usage and many privations. Neither side showed tenderness to its adversaries. There came a day when he was ordered, together with some other captured rebels, to march in the front rank of the Royal troops. A musket, had been thrust into his hands. ”