The excitement produced by this new affair was great indeed,--a perfect panic. The cibolero's head rose in value, like the funds. The magistrates and principal men assembled in the Casa de Cabildo. A new proclamation was drawn out. A larger sum was offered for the capture of Carlos, and the document was rendered still stronger by a declaration of severe punishment to all who should give him food or protection. If captured beneath the roof of any citizen who had voluntarily sheltered him, the latter was to suffer full confiscation of his property, besides such further punishment as might be fixed upon. The Church was not silent. The padres promised excommunication and the wrath of Heaven against those who would stay justice from the heretic murderer! These were terrible terms for the outlaw! Fortunately for him, he knew how to live without a roof over his head. He could maintain existence where his enemies would have starved, and where they were unable to follow him,--on the wide desert plain, or in the rocky ravines of the mountains. Had he depended for food or shelter on his fellow-citizens of the settlement he would soon have met with betrayal and denouncement. But the cibolero was as independent of such a necessity as the wild savage of the prairies. He could sleep on the grassy sward or the naked rock, he could draw sustenance even from the arid surface of the Llano Estacado, and there he could bid defiance to a whole army of pursuers. At the council Don Ambrosio was not present. Grief and rage kept him within doors. A stormy scene had been enacted between him and his daughter. Henceforth she was to be strictly guarded--to be kept a prisoner in her father's house--to be taught repentance by the exercise of penance. To describe the feelings of Roblado and the Comandante would be impossible. These gentlemen were well-nigh at their wits' end with mortification. Disappointment, humiliation, physical and moral pain, had worked them into a frenzy of rage; and they were engaged together during all the day in plotting schemes and plans for the capture of their outlawed enemy. Roblado was not less earnest than the Comandante in the success of their endeavours. Carlos had now given both of them good cause to hate him, and both hated him from the bottom of their hearts.