ll stretched between
us and the sky, we perceived something huge rushing swiftly down. It
appeared; it drew near; it struck, and fell to pieces like a shattered
glass. We ran to look, and there before us were the fragments of
the diligence, and among them the mangled corpses of five of our
fellow-travellers.

This was the fate that we had escaped.

"Oh! for God's sake come away," moaned Emma, and sick with horror we
turned and ran, or rather reeled, into the shelter of the trees upon the
plain.

CHAPTER II

THE HACIENDA

"What are those?" said Emma presently, pointing to some animals that
were half hidden by a clump of wild bananas. I looked and saw that
they were two of the mules which the brigands had cut loose from the
diligence. There could be no mistake about this, for the harness still
hung to them.

"Can you ride?" I asked.

She nodded her head. Then we set to work. Having caught the mules
without difficulty, I took off their superfluous harness and put her on
the back of one of them, mounting the other myself. There was no time
to lose, and we both of us knew it. Just as we were starting I heard a
voice behind me calling "senor." Drawing the pistol from my pocket, I
swung round to find myself confronted by a Mexican.

"No shoot, senor," he said in broken English, for this man had served
upon an American ship, "Me driver, Antonio. My mate go down there," and
he pointed to the precipice; "he dead, me not hurt. You run from bad
men, me run too, for presently they come look. Where you go?"

"To Mexico," I answered.

"No get Mexico, senor; bad men watch road and kill you with _machete_
so," and he made a sweep with his knife, adding "they not want you live
tell soldiers."

"Listen," said Emma. "Do you know the _hacienda_, Concepcion, by the
town of San Jose?"

"Yes, senora, know it well, the _hacienda_ of Senor Gomez; bring you
there to-morrow."

"Then show the way," I said, and we started towards the hills.

All that day we travelled over mountains as fast as the mules could
carry us, Antonio trotting by our side. At sundown, having seen nothing
more of the brigands, who, I suppose, took it for granted that we were
dead or were too idle to follow us far, we reached an Indian hut, where
we contrived to buy some wretched food consisting of black _frijole_
beans and _tortilla_ cakes. That night we slept in a kind of hovel made
of open poles with a roof of faggots through which the water drop