It is as well to add that Tcharanguii told the Sayotkatta that they were the daughters of one of the most powerful gentlemen in Chili, and that, in order to force him to make common cause with the chief of the Jaos, he had decided on taking one of them for his wife. And lastly, he added, that a magnificent present would amply reward him for the watch which he begged him to keep.
We left the unhappy relics of the caravan suffering from the impression which the fatal result of their struggle with the Indians produced on them. At the moment when young Don Juan made his appearance in the camp a triple exclamation of joy, interest, and surprise greeted him.
"My son! my Juan!" the general exclaimed, sobs choking his voice.
"My dear colonel," said Don Pedro, "Heaven be praised that you are safe!"
"Ah!" muttered Leon, whom the arrival of the young man aroused from the despondency into which the disappearance of the maidens had plunged him.
The colonel rushed weeping into his father's arms, who showed him the body of his murdered wife.
"You arrive too late, my son! This is the work of the Indians."
"My mother!" the young man said, as he fell on his knees before the corpse.
"Yes, your mother! who died beneath their blows, while your sisters have been torn from me for ever."
"The truth," Don Pedro remarked. "Your sisters have been carried off, in spite of all the efforts we made to oppose it."
"Oh, father! father!" was all that Don Juan could answer, as he gave the old gentleman a look of painful regret.
The old general's features were frightfully contracted by the crushing grief that oppressed his heart as a husband and father, and yet, overcoming it by the strength of his will, he seized his son's hand:
"Don Juan, thirty years of happiness have passed since the day when the wife whom I lament for the first time laid her hand in mine, and now Heaven has taken her from me again! Two children, whom I love as I love you, Juan, were, with you, the fruits of that union, and Heaven has allowed them to be torn from my side! Still, I bow before His omnipotent will, because I am a Christian, and in the midst of my profound affliction, you are left to me, my son, to punish the cowards who attack women when they have men to face them. Don Juan, will you avenge your mother and sisters?"