On receiving this threatening declaration of war, the general fell into an extraordinary passion, the more terrible because it was impotent, and then, when his mind became calm again, and he began reflecting, he felt frightened. In truth, the man who stood so boldly before him as an enemy, must be very powerful and certain of success thus to dare and defy him.
His departure from Sonora was a disgraceful flight, in which he tried, by craft and caution, to throw out his enemy; but the meeting at the Fort of the Chichimèques, a meeting long prepared by the hunter, proved to him that he was unmasked once again, and conquered by his enemy.
The contemptuous manner in which Valentine dismissed him after his stormy explanation with him, had internally filled the general with terror. What sinister projects could the man be meditating, what private vengeance was he arranging, that, when he held him quivering in his grasp, he allowed his foe to escape, and refused to kill him, when that would have been so easy? What torture more terrible than death did he intend to inflict on him?
The remainder of his journey across the Rocky Mountains, as far as Mexico, was one protracted agony, during which, suffering from constant apprehension, and extreme nervous excitement, his diseased imagination inflicted on him moral torture in the stead of which any physical pain would have been welcome.
The loss of his daughter's corpse, and above all, the death of his father's old comrade in arms, the only man in whom he put faith, and who possessed his entire confidence, destroyed his energy, and for several days he was so overwhelmed by this double misfortune, that he longed for death.
His punishment was beginning. But General Guerrero was one of those powerful athletes who do not allow themselves to be overcome so easily; they may totter in the struggle, and roll on the sand of the arena, but they always rise again more terrible and menacing than before. His revolted pride restored his expiring courage; and since an implacable warfare was declared against him, he swore that he would fight to the end, whatever the consequences for him might be.
Moreover, two months had elapsed since his arrival in Mexico, and his enemy had not revealed his presence by one of those terrible blows which burst like a clap of thunder above his head. The general gradually began supposing that the hunter had only wished to force him to abandon Sonora, and that, in despair of carrying out his plans advantageously in a city like Mexico, he was prudently keeping aloof, and if he had not completely renounced his vengeance, circumstances at any rate, independent of his will, compelled him to defer it.