"On beholding this, a shudder passed over his brown and muscular frame, and turning up the dead face, now livid, white and horrible, with fallen jaw, and glazed eyes, he exclaimed, in a piercing and terrible voice: "'_Mia madre! mia madre!_' "He had decapitated his own mother!" CHAPTER V. SUSPICION. While the ladies listened breathlessly, and uttered proper exclamations of horror, the narrator, with their permission, lighted a cigar, and, squatting on the ground in the Texan mode, continued his story. "Zuares grovelled in the dust, so dismounting, I picked up the blood-spotted dollars, and was in the act of pocketing them, when a musket flashed in the dark, leafy hollow, a bullet whizzed past my left ear, and----" "What! did you actually take the poor woman's dollars?" exclaimed Morley. "Of course," replied Hawkshaw, coolly; "would you have had me leave them on the mountain road?" "Yes; perhaps no; but----" "_Caramba!_" said Hawkshaw, angrily, but using his favourite Spanish interjection, "in such a country as that, I was not such a thundering muff." "Go on, please. What followed, pray?" asked Ethel. "I took up the money that lay on the road. You, Mr. Ashton, may call it robbery, perhaps--granted. But what do the best men in England, yearly, at the Oaks, the Derby, and elsewhere? Oh, there is no such thing as robbery on the turf, of course. Well, where was I?" "A musket was fired at you," said Rose. "Exactly, and then I saw Pedro Barradas, a vast and bulky Spanish seaman, whom, unfortunately, I knew too well, advancing towards me, with his Albacete knife tied by a handkerchief bayonet-wise to the muzzle of his piece. He was a ferocious fellow, and I knew that, when he and Zuares were so far inland, rapine and robbery were their sole objects and means of subsistence. "These brothers once carried off a poor boy, the son of a widow, who resided near the Laguna d'Alvarado, and kept him among their companions in the mountains, till his mother was well-nigh distracted. A ransom of fifty duros was required by a padre, whom they sent as their messenger. She sent twenty--all she could borrow or scrape together; but, instead of her boy, she received back one of his ears, with a message that other parts of him, perhaps his _cabeza_ (head) would follow, if the fifty duros were not forthcoming. "The money was collected and intrusted to the padre, who, unknown to himself, was followed by twenty soldiers, sent by the commandant of Orizaba, with special orders to shoot the Barradas and their companions. "Pedro saw these men approaching, and, believing that the padre had betrayed them, he pocketed the dollars, and with his stiletto stabbed the bearer and the boy to the heart, and fled to the woods of the Rio Blanco. "Such was the character of the fellow who now advanced against me.