in a
jocular way--

"_Adios, Senor cochero_! May your journey be as pleasant as your coach
is slow. Ha, ha, ha!"

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

DOUBLE MOUNTED.

The labourers hoeing among the young maize plants, and the _tlachiquero_
drawing the sap from his magueys, saw a sight to astonish them. Two
horses of unusual size, both carrying double, and going at full gallop
as if running a race--on one of them two men in cloaks, blue and
scarlet; the other ridden by a giant, with a mis-shapen monkey-like
creature clinging on the croup behind--harness bridles, with collars
dancing loose around their necks--chains hanging down and clanking at
every bound they made--all this along field paths, in an out-of-the-way
neighbourhood where such horses and such men had never been seen before!
To the cultivator of "milpas" and the collector of "aguamiel" it was a
sight not only to astonish, but inspire them with awe, almost causing
the one to drop his hoe, the other his half-filled hog-skin, and take to
their heels. But both being of the pure Aztecan race, long subdued and
submissive, yet still dreaming of a return to its ancient rule and
glories, they might have believed it their old monarchs, Monctezuna and
Guatimozin, come back again, or the god Oatluetzale himself.

In whatever way the spectacle affected them, they were not permitted
long to look upon it. For the galloping pace was kept up without halt
or slowing; the strange-looking horses--with the men upon their backs,
still stranger to look at--soon entered a _chapparal_, which bordered
the maize and maguey fields, and so passed out of sight.

"We're near the end of our ride now," said Rivas to Kearney, after they
had been some time threading their way through the thicket, the horses
from necessity going at a walk. "If 'twere not for this ironmongery
around our ankles, I could almost say we're safe. Unfortunately, where
we've got to go the chains will be a worse impediment than ever. The
file! Have we forgotten it?"

"No," answered Kearney, drawing it from under his cloak, and holding it
up.

"Thoughtful of you, _caballero_. In the haste, I had; and we should
have been helpless without it, or at all events awkwardly fixed. If we
only had time to use it now. But we haven't--not so much as a minute to
spare. Besides the lances from Chapultepec, there's a cavalry troop of
some kind--huzzars I take it--coming on from the city. While we were
cutting loose from