shout passed along from cabin
to cabin, announcing the patter of a pack of dogs, howling, ravenous,
their bodies covered with mud, running about without finding rest,
driven on day and night, with the madness of persecution in their eyes.
The _huerta_ seemed to shudder, closing the doors of all the houses and
suddenly bristling with guns. Shots rang out from the sluices, from the
high corn-fields, from cabin windows, and when the wanderers, repelled
and persecuted on every side, in their mad gallop dashed toward the sea,
as if they were attracted by the moist, invigorating air that was washed
by the waves, the revenue-guards camped on the wide strip of beach
brought their mausers to their cheek and received them with a volley.
The dogs retreated, escaping among the men who were approaching them
musket in hand, and one or another of them would be stretched out at the
edge of a canal. At night, the noisy gloom of the plain was broken by
the sight of distant flashes and the sound of discharges. Every shape
that moved in the darkness was the target for a bullet; the muffled
howls that sounded in the vicinity of the cabins were answered by shots.
The men were afraid of this common terror, and avoided meeting.

No sooner did night fall than the _huerta_ was left without a light,
without a person upon the roads, as if death had taken possession of the
dismal plain, so green and smiling under the sun. A single red spot, a
tear of light, trembled in this obscurity. It was _Caldera's_ cabin,
where the women, squatting upon the floor, around the kitchen lamp,
sighed with fright, anticipating the strident shriek of the sick
youth,--the chattering of his teeth, the violent contortions of his body
whenever he was seized with convulsions, struggling to repel the arms
that tried to quiet him.

The mother hung upon the neck of that raving patient who struck terror
to men. She scarcely knew him; he was somebody else, with those eyes
that popped out of their sockets, his livid or blackish countenance, his
writhings, like that of a tortured animal, showing his tongue as he
gasped through bubbles of froth in the agonies of an insatiable thirst.
He begged for death in heart-rending shrieks; he struck his head against
the wall; he tried to bite; but even so, he was her child and she did
not feel the fear experienced by the others. His menacing mouth withdrew
before the wan face that was moistened with tears. "Mother! Mother!" He
recognized