the task. With a vacillation to which he had hitherto been a stranger, he remained for many days undecided; a suspicion of deceit appears to have presented itself to his mind; but at length he resolved to accept the commission. His hesitation, meanwhile, had completed his ruin; it had given time for the maturing of deadly plans.
In midsummer, 1835, (December 18th,) the Gaucho chieftain commenced his fateful journey. As he entered the carriage which was to be his home for many days, and bade farewell to the adherents who were assembled to witness his departure, he turned toward the city with a wild expression and words that were remembered afterwards. _Si salgo bien_, he said, _te volevré á ver; si no, adios para siempre!_ "If I succeed, I shall see thee again; if not, farewell forever!" Was it a presentiment of the truth which came upon him, like that which clouded the great mind of the first Napoleon as he left the Tuileries when the Hundred Days were running out?
One hour before his departure, a mounted messenger had been dispatched from Buenos Ayres in the same direction as that he was about to follow; and the city was scarcely out of sight when Quiroga manifested the most feverish anxiety to overtake this man. His travelling companions were his secretary, Dr. Ortiz, and a young man of his acquaintance, bound for Córdova, to whom he had given a seat in his vehicle. The postilions were incessantly admonished to make haste. At a shallow stream which they forded, in the mud of which the wheels became imbedded, resisting every effort for their release, Quiroga actually hooked the postmaster of the district, who had hastened to the spot, to the carriage, and made him join his exertions to those of the horses until the vehicle was extricated, when he sped onward with fearful velocity, asking at every post-station, "When did the _chasquí_ from Buenos Ayres pass? An hour ago! Forward, then!" and the carriage swept onward, on unceasingly, across the lonely Pampa,--racing, as it afterwards proved, with Death.
At last, Córdova, nearly six hundred miles from his starting-point, was reached, just one hour after the arrival of the hunted courier. Quiroga was besought by the cringing magistracy to spend the night in their city. His only answer was, "Give me horses!" and two hours before midnight he rolled out of Córdova, having _beaten_ in the grisly race.
Beaten, inasmuch as he was yet alive. For Córdova was ringing with the details of his intended assassination. Such and such men were to have done the deed; at such a shop the pistol had been bought; at such a spot it was to have been fired;--but the marvellous swiftness of the intended victim had ruined all.
Meanwhile, Quiroga sped onward more at ease toward Tucuman. Arrived there, he speedily arranged the matters in dispute, and was entreated by the governors of that province and of Santiago to accept of an escort on his return; he was besought to avoid Córdova, to avoid Buenos Ayres; he was counselled to throw off the mask of subservience, and to rally his numerous adherents in La Rioja and San Juan;--but remonstrance and advice were alike thrown away upon him. In vain was the most circumstantial account of the preparations for his murder sent by friends from Córdova; he appeared as foolhardy now in February as in December he had been panic- stricken. "To Córdova!" he shouted, as he entered his _galera_; and for Córdova the postilions steered.
At the little post-hut of Ojos del Agua, in the State of Córdova, Quiroga, with his secretary, Ortiz, halted one night on the homeward journey. Shortly before reaching the place, a young man had mysteriously stopped the carriage, and had warned its hurrying inmates that at a spot called Barranca Yaco a _partida_, headed by one Santos Perez, was awaiting the arrival of Quiroga. There the massacre was to take place. The youth, who had formerly experienced kindness at the hands of Ortiz, begged him to avoid the danger. The unhappy secretary was rendered almost insane with terror, but his master sternly rebuked his fears.
