Alma-Negra.

Antonio de Trueba

I.

In the center of the Encartaciones de Vizcaya there is a mountain range that, starting from the Somorrostro valley, heads towards the South, and touching the left bank of the Cadagua, curves, leaning towards the West at its two ends, as if to form a loving lap for the councils of Galdames and Sopuerta, and after having been formed, it fades away and dies when it touches the foral council of Avellaneda, to the south of the second of the aforementioned councils.

The beginning of this mountain range, which bears the name of Triano, and in recent years has been covered by a large mining population, in which marvelous activity reigns, is what the naturalist Plinio named when he said that in the maritime part of Cantabria, Bathed by the Ocean, there was a high, broken mountain, so abundant in iron that it was all made of this material.

At the central summit of the mountain range, that is, between Galdames and Baracaldo, there is a large hollow, which bears the name of Escachabelza, equivalent to Blackthorn. This name comes from a black hawthorn, pyramidal in shape, which stands at the bottom of the hole, and precisely next to the mouth of a chasm, through which all the waters of the nearby slopes are added, which, except for that chasm, they would form there an extensive and deep lake, since they have no outlet anywhere else.

The waters that enter the Escachabelza chasm come out through the large horizontal cave of Urallaga, on the Galdames slope, that is, to the west.

That cave is a true wonder, and seen from the opposite mountains, that is, from those to the west of Sopuerta, whose council, with that of Galdames, is enclosed in an amphitheater of mountain ranges, it looks like a gigantic black eye that has tears a torrent and for a pupil a temple: the tears are the waters that are added by the chasm of Escachabelza, and the pupil, the hermitage of the Magdalena, erected, in times of no memory preserved, under the titanic exterior arch of the cavern.

The great wonder, and I could even say the great terror of my childhood, was the Urállaga cave, which I saw from my father’s house, located in the foothills of the mountains bordering the cave.

I heard so many mysterious and wonderful advice when I was a child about that cave, that torrent, that hermitage, and even that chasm of Escachabelza that naturally I could not see except with my imagination, that I did not dare to look towards Urállaga without shuddering of horror.

In the terrifying councils of my childhood the name of a Black-Soul sounded, whose abominable actions corresponded to that name, and Black-Soul had ended up rushing in despair into the chasm of Escachabelza. When the torrent grew and roared, as it rushed down the cliff that precedes the Urállaga cavern, our mothers and grandmothers told us:

«Look and hear how Black-Alma cries and rages for having been bad and being condemned to live eternally in the horrible darkness of Escachabelza and Urállaga!»

When I left my native land, for all the treasures in the world I would not have gone up to Urállaga alone, much less would I have approached the Magdalena cave or the Escachabelza chasm; But when I returned to the same land, now a mature man and accustomed to bluffing, presuming myself to be a philosopher and carefree, one of my greatest desires was to climb alone to those heights and approach those dark and mysterious dens, to see if in the man with pretenses of enlightened thinker, the terrors and superstitions of naive and ignorant childhood still exercised some dominion.

There is on the opposite side of Galdames, that is, on the slope of Baracaldo, a small valley about a league long, and so narrow that the boys stone the walnut trees at the beginning of the slope on the right from the beginning of the slope on the right, left, and vice-versa.

That little valley is a true paradise, particularly in spring and summer. If God gave me, in addition to an Eve as I imagine her, something more than the shadow and the fruit of an apple tree, how gladly would he spend the rest of his life there who, like me, is content to have

on the shelf, books;
in the cupboard, bread;
In your own home, love,
and in someone else's, friendship!

That little valley is called Regato, a corruption of Errecátu, which is equivalent to a stream, and its entire bottom, which runs through a bustling and clear stream, is dotted with farmhouses, mills, ruins of forges and small orchards where sour cherry trees, cherry trees, The peach trees, the plum trees, the apple trees, the pear trees, the medlar trees, and a hundred other kinds of fruit trees, form delicious groves that produce the most beautiful fruits.

It was the month of December, and some friends of mine, as fond of fishing trout as I am of eating them, invited me to accompany them to the Regato, where they were going fishing, promising me that I was going to eat the tastiest trout I had ever eaten in my life. I accepted the invitation, and before noon we were at the Regato.

What was I going to do while the trout were not edible? Oh! I always have with me such a fun companion, who never allows me to get bored. Bless her, although more than four times, since she’s a little crazy, she gives me a hard time!

The day was mild and peaceful, although sad; because the sun had not deigned to appear that morning over the peaks of Bizcárgui.

"I'm going," I said to my companions, "to greet my dear Galdameses and endure us from the peaks of Urállaga, while you catch at least a dozen trout and the Arangúren miller turns them nicely browned."

Saying so, I continued up the valley, and when I reached the Urcullu neighborhood, which is the last one, Mari-Cruz fortified me with a jug of the golden and innocent wine from her vineyard, and I started up the slope, which reminds me, in its difficulty, of this one. the life in which those of us in Spain who carry a pen are bursting at the seams.

The truth is that what brought me to the top was not so much the Galdameses and the Supportans as the curiosity to find out if there was anything left in me of the superstitions of childhood, after having spent twenty-five or thirty years pretending to be a philosopher and a carefree man.

I was now approaching the summit of the mountain, and no matter how much I tried to remove from my memory those terrifying stories of the Magdalena cave and the Escachabelza chasm, which they had told me in my childhood, showing me that gigantic, black eye, which seemed looking at us menacingly in the mountain borders, I couldn't do it, nor could I get my carefreeness and my philosophy to make me smile at those stories.

At last I saw the Escachabelza hollow, and I could not suppress a shudder of terror, to which no doubt contributed not a little the black hawthorn that stood next to the chasm, and seemed a dark ghost in that quiet solitude, where there was no There was no tree or bush other than it and the stunted heather mixed with clay that covered the ground throughout the entire length of the hole.

Shortly before discovering this one, I had found a flock of sheep that were going down towards the Regato, as if headed in that direction from above, and I had thought if they were those of Mari-Cruz, who, asking him about his children, had answered me:

—They have gone up to the mountain to drive down the sheep; Because they are so fearful that as night approaches there is no one to make them climb upwards.

I was contemplating the black thorn tree, which, now stripped of its leaf, seemed, as I have said, a black ghost, when I heard the conversation of boys behind a hillock that stood not far from me, and a moment later I saw one of them appear. them on the hill.

The boy looked at the bottom of the ravine, exclaiming with horror: "Black-soul!" He disappeared, and for a few moments I heard his footsteps and those of his companions, who were running down the mountain, as if someone was chasing them.

The gloom of the afternoon, the loneliness, the fear of the boys, that kind of black ghost that stood next to the chasm, the mouth of the chasm, which was black next to the thorn tree, and above all, the advice that blackened in me. memory, they took away all my courage to move forward.

Climbing up the hill where the boy had appeared, I discovered there, in the foothills of the western mountains, the paternal house, which was whitening among the chestnut and walnut trees, already bare of leaves, and it seemed to me that the wind blowing As I arrived there, I was the bearer of a voice that told me: "My son, do not approach the chasm of Escachabelza or the cavern of Urállaga, where there roars and cries of rage and despair, Black Soul!"

Overcome with terror by these imaginings, I decided to turn back immediately, and I began the descent to the Regato, and I went down, startling myself frequently with the sound of footsteps that I seemed to hear behind me, as if Black-Soul was following me.

My companions were already waiting for me under the Aranguren walnut trees, with a large source of trout, which they caught and which the miller fried.

When, after eating happily, the word "Let’s go" came, I indicated to my companions my intention to stay in the Regato that night, pretexting, in order to stay, my desire to return to Urcullu, in order to slowly examine certain old and curious papers that Mari-Cruz possessed

In fact, that night I spent the night in Urcullu and spent the evening, not in examining papers, but in examining old men, young men, and children, to find out who Black Soul was and what he did, whose nagging nature was already known to me since the beginning. childhood; Well, my mother, who was a very loving Galdamesan of her native place, was careful to warn me, whenever she spoke of Alma-negra, that Galdames, a ancestral place par excellence, according to the testimony of the chronicler Lopez García de Salazar, had not seen it turn red. of shame to his white annals, narrating in them that the paternity of Alma-negra belonged to him.

With the little news that I had about this sadly exceptional man, and even more exceptional in the land where he was born, what I acquired in Urcullu that night, and what I acquired in the other neighborhoods of Regato the next morning, I acquired enough light to to find in the protocols of the notaries what I needed to complete the story of Alma-negra, which today I reduce to a very summary compendium, so that it fits in this book.

II.

I have already said that Regato is one of the most beautiful valleys on the Cantabrian coast, where there are paradisiacal ones. However, the hero of this story thought the opposite since he had, or rather, should have had the use of reason.

His parents were somewhat well-off landlords (owners of their own homes), and they had no other children than Roque. His house was one of the oldest and most honored in the republic of Barakaldo, and the golden dream of the owners of that house was to increase it and return it to the relative opulence that it had previously had.

The source from which I have learned the most curious news to learn about the history and domestic customs of our northern provinces in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries are the protocols of the notaries, the wills, the foundations of ties, the deeds of sale, inventories of assets, criminal proceedings, etc.: they are a very rich mine, which it had barely occurred to those who had preceded me here in certain investigations to exploit.

In one of these protocols I found very curious news about the ancestors of Alma-negra, who bore the antonomastic surname of Regato, although their solar house had the name of Urdangujeta, to differentiate itself from others when it stopped being the only important one in that neighborhood.

Already in the middle of the 16th century he had come to such decline due to setbacks and undeserved misfortunes, that his lord Ochoa, Lopez del Regato, included this clause or recommendation in his will:

«Item: I truly entrust my successors to put their greatest effort into restoring and increasing the luster and wealth of our honored land, which since the last flag wars between Oñecinos and Gamboinos, to which they happily put an end and corporal. the Catholic kings Don Fernando and Doña Isabel, has been declining and diminishing to such an extreme that I myself, to my great pain, and to pay debts contracted by my parents, may God have, sold years ago to Pedro de Salazar, When I formed a connection in Galindo, the ironworks and mills of Urdangujeta, and very good trees, my assets were reduced to the lot, with its adjacent lands and trees, which with a lot of work I managed to preserve. These assets are little, and even more so if one considers that not even a hundred years ago the annual rents of the plot exceeded a thousand ducats; But I pray and entrust my successors to try to restore and increase our honored house, and to make to theirs the request and entrustment that I make to them in this my last will; and if any of them does not do so, my curse will fall on him, and with the property he covets most he will lose life and soul.»

The good Ochoa’s request and order had been repeated as the last will of the owners of the Regato lot. The parents of the one who was first called Roque, then Don Roque, and finally, Alma-Negra, had a great desire to respond to that request and commission, and they had done everything possible to achieve it; But although his house and estate had improved and prospered in his hands, he was still very far from achieving that prosperity that Ochoa commemorated with admiration not unfounded, since a thousand ducats of annual income, even in the 18th century, constituted great opulence in Vizcaya, or rather, in Spain.

The love that the Urdangujeta landlords had for their noble plot, and for the little corner where they were born, lived, and wanted to die, was so endearing that not even the thought had ever occurred to them that there was a more beautiful corner in the world. than that one, nor a house where they could live with more honor than in that one.

Judge how much their pain would be when they observed that their only son and successor showed more and more detachment from the house and the valley, and showed more and more desire to go: "out there", a phrase that in Vizcaya is equivalent to going to America, just as "going up there" is equivalent to going to the interior of the Peninsula.

Seeing that in the boy, as the age increased, that detachment and that desire increased, they consulted prudent and enlightened people what they should do, and the result was coming to this reasoning:

«Everyone who has been out there says that even the most outcast becomes fond of his land and his family when he is far from them; And on the other hand, Indians are coming every day who find the house where they were born almost fallen, and they turn it into a palace. This rascal of a boy insists that he has to go out there, and perhaps he is right in insisting, because here, if he stays, it is likely that what will happen to us, who have been able to do almost nothing to improve the house and the farm, even though we have worked hard, eager to fulfill the task that our ancestors gave us. The best thing will be to please Roque, sending him out there. If to pay for the trip we have to sacrifice the half dozen ounces of gold that we are saving with the aim of buying the ruined forge and mill that are below our house, and which formerly belonged to it, so that, since we cannot We will rebuild the mill and forge, if one of our successors has already gone halfway to do so, God will give the boy fortune, and we will have the satisfaction of not dying without seeing that in our time the wish of our ancestors has been fulfilled, that The Regato house has in its vicinity, as in its good times, a forge that works and a mill that grinds.»

Roque, who was never expansive with anyone, even his parents, because the degree of freezing seemed to be the constant and natural temper of his heart, abandoned that coldness for the first time when his parents told him that they were determined to please him by sending him to America, and he even promised to dedicate the first money he earned to replenish and increase the savings destined for the recovery of the ironworks site and the mill sold by his great-great-grandfather Ochoa to honor his paternal memory.

Roque embarked for the island of Cuba, on a ship anchored in Olabeaga. His parents, who had accompanied him to the anchorage, continued to mourn the departure of the ship, until it disappeared from their sight at Zorrozaurre below, and immediately they went up to Begoña, to ask the Virgin to intercede with her Divine Son Jesus so that Roque He crossed the seas safely, and then felt in his heart the love for his father’s house and his native land, which had not managed to bring a tear to his eyes when he left both.

Months passed and even years passed, and Roque’s parents were becoming convinced that their son’s heart was little more than sterile for love of country and family; but they still waited, because hope needs very harsh blows to die in good souls, and above all, if these souls are those of a father and a mother who found it in a son.

One day they learned that someone was planning to purchase the land of the ironworks and the Urdangujeta mill, to establish a tannery or tanning factory there, as we say now. This news caused them deep regret, among other reasons, because if that project was carried out, all hope of seeing their golden dream of recovering what Ochoa Lopez del Regato sold to pay very sacred debts would disappear.

Neither Roque had sent them any money, nor had they asked him, despite some years having passed since he was absent and he having written to them to have one more opportunity to mortify their patriotism: «In no time I have won here More money than all that damned land is worth, which should be burned from end to end and sown with salt.»

In the conflict of not having the means to anticipate buying the site of the ironworks and the mill of Urdangujeta, with their rights and belongings, and seeing that another was going to acquire them to create an interest in it that would multiply its value one hundred times, they wrote to Roque telling him what was happening and urging him to provide them with means to anticipate the purchase of that lot, and even reminding him of the terrible curse placed by Ochoa on any of his successors who went against his earnest request and order.

Roque’s response was a brutal letter, the summary of which was this:

«I would be as simple as VV. If I spent a quarter to buy or recover in those fields, which are only good for cattle. Far from accessing what VV. They tell me, I advise them to sell the house and the farm and everything they have in that goat paradise at any price, and go live... the further away the better; Well, as Christ or I don't know who said, no one is a prophet in his country. If VV does not do it this way, I warn you that when I inherit it, I will have fun setting it on fire with those pieces of paper that VV guards so carefully. under the pretext that in them is the history of our lineage since the time of Mari-Castaña. You will believe in all the nonsense and superstitions you want, but I believe that each one is a child of his works, and consequently, that humanity has no parents, much less grandparents. Regarding the curse of my great-great-grandfather that VV. They remember me, as if asking for my purse or my life, I put it under my paw, and... walk.»

When Roque’s parents received this brutal letter, the first thing they did was cry without consolation; Afterwards, sadness and discomfort replaced tears, and within a year, in which they were twenty, they both went down to rest under the cold flagstones of the church of San Vicente de Baracaldo.

III.

As much as Don Roque strove to get rich on the island of Cuba, his capital was far from reaching the level of his ambitions.

As greed breaks the bag, and he who has a lot gets little, his businesses went badly because he was so persistent in making them go well. An example of this was that he had used all of his capital to buy a herd of black slaves, which he assigned to certain agricultural jobs, which he undertook under contract and directed for himself; and wanting each black to work for four and eat for half, he increased their whip ration in such a way and decreased their pair ration, that almost all of them were dying or escaping, so that he was almost ruined.

Then he said almost desperately:

—The straps must come from the leather.

And he dedicated himself to the slave trade par excellence, which no one knows what it is, or rather what it was, then, for the glory of our time, which, if it has many things to be ashamed of, has no less to glory in, that infamous traffic, cursed by God and human dignity, has almost disappeared in our days. First associated with others of as good character as him, and then, when his capital permitted it, on his own account, he dedicated himself to bringing from the coasts of Guinea a shipment of innocent blacks of both sexes and of all ages, which he sold in the Antilles, with which he became rich in a few years.

But the heat of Senegal, which they say is like that of an oven when the bread is half-baked, so deteriorated his health that the doctor announced his death as certain and imminent if he did not hurry back to his native country, which was the only thing from which he could hope for salvation.

The country that Don Roque liked the least was, oddly enough, the one where he had been born, the one that had been the love of his parents' loves, the one where his parents' bones rested! This explains the advice he gave to his parents to go live as far away as possible, and this question he asked the doctor:

—And wouldn't it be the same if I went to another country with a temperature similar to mine?

The doctor, who knew why he was limping, answered:

—No way. The more or less high temperature is not the only thing that influences whether the native country is good for the restoration and preservation of the health of many people, and V. one of them: what influences is the harmony that exists in nature of a country and that of some of those who were born and educated in it. You belong to the number of those people whose nature is so identified with that of the country in which you were born, that you cannot live without it.

—Well, you already know that I have lived for many years in a strange country, without any damage to my health.

—Unbroken? That is your mistake. Your nature was very strong, and has long endured without apparent break; but the break began the moment you left the country of your birth.

—But, sir, how can that be, if by chance I cannot see or paint such a country?

—That is precisely the reason why you cannot live outside of it.

—If I understand it, shoot me.

—I will explain it to you, man, I will explain it to you, without leaving a shadow of a doubt. For the same reason that V.’s moral nature has received nothing from the nature of the native country, he has received a lot from the physical nature. Go to his country, and it is likely that you will recover your health there. If he succeeds, be very careful not to expose yourself to relapse, for you will surely relapse and die if he is absent again.

It should be noted that the doctor who assisted Don Roque was very fond of his native country, and outraged by the aversion that Don Roque had for the country, he proposed to punish him by making him swallow it with the assumption that his life depended on it.

As Don Roque was deeply selfish, and the idea of ​​death horrified him since he had achieved the only object of his desires, which was half a million duros, he resigned himself to returning to Spain. Before resigning himself, he consulted other doctors to see if they disagreed with the opinion of the one who ordinarily assisted him, and therefore he could avoid the trip; But since, using his rude expression, the doctors are all wolves of the same litter, they all confirmed the opinion of his colleague, out of a spirit of camaraderie.

And since Don Roque was short of understanding, he believed that the more closely he followed the doctor’s advice, the sooner he would recover his health, and he was not content with returning to Spain, nor to Vizcaya, nor to the Encartaciones, nor to Baracaldo: he returned to Regato, and even settled in his father’s house.

When he looked at the hill on which the church of San Vicente stands, in whose holy shadow his parents rested, he felt neither heat nor cold in his heart; When he reached the fountain of Amezaga, and applied his lips to the spring, and sat under the oaks that gave their shade to the fountain, it was simply because he was thirsty and tired, and not because he remembered how many times, on his way back from school, or from mass, he had drunk from that fountain and had sat or deviled under those oak trees.

When he approached Urdangujeta, and saw the ruins of the mill and the forge that I don't know how many generations of his ancestors had owned and operated, and for whose recovery successive generations had longed, it only occurred to him to say:

—It seems incredible that my parents were so stupid that they longed to spend their money on that pile of stones and brambles, very good for vermin nests.

When he approached his father’s house, the only thing he thought and said was:

—That house seems more and more ugly and miserable to me! And when he passed the threshold of the house, and went up the stairs, and entered the room where he had been born and his parents had died, and sat down on the seat where his parents and grandparents had sat, he contented himself with thinking:

If the smell of the stable would be harmful to your health.

If there were fleas in that room that wouldn't let him sleep comfortably.

If in that home white hands could cook as well as in those in Cuba black hands cooked.

Denying the village and its inhabitants, lashing out at the climate of his country, saying that, although no one in the world beats a good Catholic, he resented religious practices, because they were pure inventions of priests and friars, abstaining from giving alms to every poor person who came to his door, because he said that he did not like to protect leisure, describing his countrywomen as idiots, because they rejected him with indignation when he looked at them "with kind eyes," as he called his brutal system of to make women fall in love, which consisted of addressing them, placing an ounce of gold in front of each eye and accompanying this action with a shameless proposition; and finally, propagating theories such as that of women’s communism, which he said should be disentailed in order to give the country many citizens, and not a few as it gave into dead hands, that is, in the power of only one man, passed D He spent a few months in his father’s house, with such happy results for his failing health that at the end of that time he ate like a chilblain, slept like a dormouse and snored like a pig.

Then he moved to Bilbao, saying that the village was only for animals, and there he began to associate with the Indians.

It is necessary to explain what is meant by an Indiano here. This name is generally given in the northern provinces to the sons of the country who as boys went to America, achieved a more or less large fortune and returned to their native country with the intention of spending the rest of their lives there, or spending only a season. and return to America to dedicate himself to his business, with new encouragement for it, after satisfying his desire to breathe the air of the country and embrace his family and childhood friends.

Generally, these Indians settle in the native town, where they put their fortune to honest and fruitful use, but others go to settle in the towns and capitals. Bilbao is the town preferred by the greatest number of them, since many people who are natives of the provinces of Búrgos and Santander and even Navarra and Astúrias live there, and they contract bonds of love, friendship and material interest, which They completely confuse with the rest of the population.

Don Roque associated himself with a group of Indians, seeking from them curses for his native land; but the Indians, who in exile had raised the cult of their country to fanaticism, rejected him as a renegade and blasphemer.

He immediately sought out the few strangers to the country who were then residing in Bilbao, and associated himself with them; But these also rejected him, indignant that there were those who cursed their own land, when they, if they did not love, respected the foreign land.

In Bilbao Don Roque lived even more solitary than in the village, because the society, the more cultured it is, the more it avoids the contact of those with a coarse soul and understanding. That loneliness coincided with some very bad news that Mr. Roque received. This news was that a trading house in Havana had gone bankrupt, where, tempted by the greed of a certain percentage of interest much higher than that offered by all the other trading houses, trade, had left most of his capital.

Don Roque’s desperation was terrible, and if Don Roque did not shoot himself, it was not out of fear of God, because he had been heard to say a thousand times when discussing whether suicide was a sin or stopped being one:

—What a sin, not what a pumpkin! I am as Catholic as the first one, but those inventions of priests and friars annoy me. If I hate to blow my brains out with a pistol shot, because my body is mine and very strong, what does God have to do with it?

And when they had argued to him that his body belonged to God, because God had formed him, he had hastened to reply:

Yes, God and our parents have as much right to our bodies as the residents of Bilbao have to the vegetables that are raised in Deusto and Abando with the garbage that is taken from Bilbao to the gardens.

If Don Roque did not shoot himself, it was because he worshiped a unique God, who was his person.

When Don Roque was left alone and half ruined, he did not even think about returning to that land where he had found himself so comfortable, first, cracking the whip on backs, black yes, but as daughters of God as white backs, and Later, trading in human flesh in an even more disgusting manner, it was because he already abhorred that land, where they had just stolen, as he said, the fruit of his "honest sweat" of many years.

Seeing that Don Roque saw that the health he had recovered in Regato was failing in Bilbao, he decided to return to Regato, and he returned to Regato.

Distracting himself in his own way, and eating and drinking like a brute, he returned to gaining weight, sleeping and snoring as in his best days, somewhat resigned to the loss of most of his capital; because, he said, weighing a large cat skin bag that he constantly carried in the inside pocket of his jacket:

«The cat is still fat!»

The history of this bag gives the measure of Don Roque’s feelings.

When he returned to his parents' house, there was still a very beautiful cat that he was told was from his parents' time and that they had loved and pampered him very much, in whose attention, some neighbors who had taken care of the house when they died, They continued to take care of him, believing that, if he returned soon from America, Don Roque would experience great comfort finding that memory of his parents.

The cat, who was gentle and sweet even with strangers, could not see Don Roque without his hair standing on end, his back hunching, his eyes dazzling, and hissing menacingly, as if he wanted to throw himself at him. Whether it was for this reason, or whether it was because its skin was shiny and whimsically painted black and white, Don Roque decided to kill the cat to make a bag with its skin, and, in effect, he killed it, making it hang itself on a rope. wire that he placed for this purpose in the flap of the door through which the poor animal entered and exited, and made a magnificent bag with its skin.

"It would be better," the neighbors told him, "if you had killed him with a shot, so God’s little animal would not have suffered so much."

"But the bag would have come out with a hole," answered Don Roque, laughing at the grace with which he had hanged his mother’s beloved and pampered little animal.

When Don Roque carried out that feat, one of the neighbors vented his indignation by calling the Indian Alma-Negra, and since then this nickname with which Don Roque del Regato has immortalized his memory in the Encartaciones dates back.

IV.

Don Roque dedicated himself to hunting, and in blocks for the shotgun he spent the papers in which the history of his honored predecessors was, including an excellent family tree that, beginning to form a few generations prior to that of Ochoa Lopez del Regato, was It had continued through all the successors until Don Roque’s parents; and when the neighbors reprimanded him for it, his only response was the one that one day he had already thrown in the face of his parents: "Humanity has no parents, much less grandparents."

Those from Regato were then, and still are, simple and good people, but bad tempered when their simplicity and good faith are abused. There were many there then, and still are, very pretty single and married women, and Don Roque dedicated himself to looking at them with what he called good eyes, which, as I have already said, consisted of putting an ounce of gold in each eye, accompanying this action with a shameless proposition, and at the same time he continued to spread his theory of the disentailment of the woman who he said should not continue in dead hands.

"You will see if our hands are alive or dead," a married man and a bad-tempered bachelor told him one day, who surprised him at the Goróstiza dam, making the former’s wife and the latter’s girlfriend blush with his shameless proposals. They were there washing the laundry. And starting to fight him, they turned him into an Ecce-Homo.

From then on, Don Roque looked for other types of entertainment to kill time in the solitude of Regato. I call it Solitude, although it is populated from stretch to stretch from Bengolea to Urcullu, because for those with a black soul, like that of Don Roque, solitude is even the most populous city.

In the high mountains that dominate the Regato, and particularly in the rocks of Ereza, which are in the background towards the South, there are many eagles of such large size that in their talons they catch even lambs and kids of about a year old. , and with them they quickly rise to the level of the highest heights, where they perch to devour them.

When Don Roque was hunting in those mountains, his greatest delight was to see how an eagle pounced on a flock of goats or sheep and snatched the lamb from the poor mother, who bleated sadly calling for him and looking around in vain for him.

So much so did he fall in love with this spectacle that he often bought a lamb or a goat at a good price, with the condition that the shepherd had to take the goat or sheep with its young to an esplanade at the top of a hill. rock, and leave them there until an eagle came down and took the lamb or kid.

Don Roque, hidden at a short distance, waited for this moment with impatient eagerness, and showed signs of indescribable joy when he contemplated the snatching of the baby by the eagle, and above all, when he contemplated the daze and heard the sad bleats of the mother.

Since Don Roque reserved for himself all the sum of love that he denied to others, he did not dare to travel through the mountains when bad weather arrived; And since it was precisely when the bad weather arrived that the eagles were hungriest, Don Roque became desperate, seeing himself then deprived of one of the greatest joys of his life.

In order not to deprive himself of this pleasure, he devised a means that confirmed the name of Alma-Negra in the Regato. He acquired two or three dogs and as many cats, who soon filled the house with puppies and kittens, with whom he called the neighborhood children to play, and when winter came, when the eagles hovered hungrily over the bottom of the valley, looking for prey there that they could not find in the snow-covered heights, and consequently, lack of livestock, he called the children who were fond of the puppies and kittens, and placing one of the latter on a masonry bench that was nearby. the door of the house, one of his supreme joys was provided by seeing him snatched by an eagle and seeing the children cry without consolation for the loss of the little dog or kitten that was the charm of those innocent creatures.

All of the Regato were peaceful, indulgent and humble people, but, even so, they had developed such an antipathy toward Don Roque that they even found it repugnant to greet him when they met him. Don Roque, offended by this antipathy, decided to make his neighbors pay dearly for it, and soon involved many of them in quarrels and lawsuits, which turned that valley, which until then had been a paradise, into a hell.

Armed with his shotgun, Alma-Negra frequently toured the valley, going or coming from hunting, or simply to mortify with his presence and his provocations the poor reggaeños, who were sweating hard on their properties so that the fruit of their sweat would be to fatten the curia, which they barely knew until Alma-black put them in forced contact with it. And dialogues like this frequently mediated between Don Roque and the Regateños:

—Keep the bag and say hello to the people, Pepe-Anton.

—I give the same advice to you.

—Well, you waste your time giving it to me, because I don't deny you the greeting, nor do I stop putting the bag away. See if my bag is well packed and packed.

And so saying, Don Roque took out the cat skin bag from the inside pocket of his jacket, and showing it to Pepe-Anton, with provocative vanity, he jingled the ounces of gold it contained, adding:

—You will see how scratched you are going to get from this cat.

—I have someone to defend me from him.

—And who is that?

—The reason.

—The reason is always on the side of the cats of this breed.

—We'll see.

—It has been seen since there have been cats like this.

And Don Roque kept his cat in the pocket of his jacket, he continued up the valley or down the valley, and wherever he found one of his neighbors he would engage in a similar conversation, and even if he was grabbed by the hair, he would bring out the cat.

The truth is that all the poor scoundrels who dared to go to court to demand protection from Almanegra’s outrages were being scratched by the cat.

One day he was seen in a worse mood than ever, and he continued like this for a while, everyone being surprised that he no longer boasted of being invincible with the possession of the cat, nor was he insolent towards single and married women, whom he regarded as lacking what he called good. eyes.

It was that another of the trading houses in Havana, where he had left part of his capital, had also gone bankrupt.

Someone less ambitious than him would still have believed himself rich enough to spend the rest of his life comfortably; because, even supposing that he could recover nothing from the capital that he had left in Havana placed in the air, by extracting twelve percent interest from it, instead of leaving it solidly placed, through half the interest, he still had a few thousand left in Bilbao. of hard

In vain he tried to ward off his bad mood, or rather, his despair, by entertaining himself, so winter came and the hungry eagles began to hover over the valley, offering daily to their rapacity, on the doorpost, one of the kittens. or little dogs with which they had fertilely filled the house during the previous summer and autumn, the two or three cats and as many other dogs that he kept to provide him with the barbaric pleasure of that spectacle.

In the main commercial centers with which Bilbao had relations, some bankruptcies occurred, and for this reason, there was a fear that those commercial accidents would extend to Bilbao. Then Don Roque determined to withdraw the capital he had left from the trading houses where he had imposed it, to use it in a good forge and a good mill, or if he was not immediately provided with the purchase of these properties, to hide it seven states under land.

When he received news that the Salazares de las Ribas de Sopuerta wanted to sell the Ballibian ironworks and mill, he mounted his horse, went up to Escachabelza, and through Urallaga descended to Galdames.

Among the sad episodes of his life that I managed to gather, with the aim of forming a large volume with them (which I later gave up, because the job of chronicler of evils repels me), there is one that I should not condemn to silence and oblivion. , since he has a white face that contrasts with the black and repugnant one offered by the entire story of the unworthy successor of Ochoa Lopez del Regato.

v.

It was at the end of August, and the drought was such that from the Arenao up the mills only ground by dams; They grinded four hours for every twenty they spent collecting water.

As in this world it is very common for the evil of some to be good for others, the drought did not reach the six mills that are counted from the Arenao below, and these mills monopolized almost all the milling of that region, without the need to walk the millers from farm to farm bringing and carrying bags, since this service was reserved for ordinary veceros and not for extraordinary ones.

To some of the latter there must have belonged a boy, about fourteen years old, who, carrying on his shoulder a bag that must have weighed as much as he, was going down towards Galdames, and was going to cross the old bridge that is below the mill, and a a girl about two or three years younger, who also carrying her little bag on her head, crossed the Labaluga river bridge.

When the girl saw the Galdamés appear over the bridge, she smiled with infinite joy, and when the Galdamés noticed the girl, his face expressed the same satisfaction.

The heat, the load and the walk had inflamed and decomposed the faces of both in such a way that, before photographing them, I must do with them what the photographers do with those who go up to take pictures in their studios placed on a hundred and so many steps. above ground level let them rest and calm down.

Pepilla and Miguel, with whose names they greeted each other when they saw each other, headed towards the mill together, engaged in the following conversation:

—Pepilla, I was afraid you wouldn't go down to the mill today.

—I was also saying: "Jesus, how angry if Miguel doesn't come down today!"

—Mother has gone to see if they are grinding her wheat today, which is little, in the Arenaza mill, and she told me: "Well, you have to go down to Arenao, to see if in the meantime they will grind your corn there, which is a lot, because tomorrow is Saturday and we have to knead.

—Well, keep in mind that the same thing happens over there. Mother has gone down with me to Pendiz, where she is staying to see if with a good dam they can grind her wheat there, which is a lot, and she has sent me to Arenao, to see if they can grind my corn here, which is little.

—Come on, it is already known that you are richer in Castañar than in Garaisolo.

—Yes, richer! Now we amass half a fanega of wheat and an emina of borona every week, but it is because Santiaguillo has already begun to send us money from Buenos Aires. Since Santiaguillo went out there, until he started sending us money, we only amassed money, that father had to give more than a hundred ducats for Santiaguillo’s trip, and we became poorer!

—Santiaguillo has had more fortune than my brother Mateo.

—Do you also have a brother in the Indies?

—Yes, I have him.

And he doesn't send you anything?

—What should the poor man send us, if he has more bad fortune!...

—Well, Santiaguillo has already sent us four ounces of gold, and he says in the letter that if God gives him luck, he will send us much more.

—Come on, four ounces!

—Father has gone to Bilbao, and without more than showing a long blue paper with some very pretty saints painted on it, which was in the letter, they gave it to him. They are more beautiful!... Yellow, yellow and shiny, and they have a sound that is a pleasure to hear.

—Your father will keep them well, because they say that ounces of gold are very harsh.

—I told him that when he showed them to us, and father and mother started laughing calling me stupid. And why would they laugh and call me that, if that’s what I've heard them say?

—Because you are innocent.

—Yes, innocent!

—And three more than you are. It is said that ounces of gold are very unfriendly, because it costs a lot to earn them and little to spend them, which is like saying that they are unfriendly in letting themselves be caught and in escaping. —Ah! I already understand it. Mother! How much more than I do you know!

—Because I'm older.

—And you have more mischief.

—It’s true.

Conversing like this, Miguel and Pepilla arrived at the mill. A few women were laughing and chatting in the doorway, sitting on the old grinding stones, which served as seats, under a large wild oak, which in my childhood was the amazement of the people who passed by there, and cut down for the largest tree. I don't know what forge, I saw its trunk dragged by more than twenty pairs of oxen.

In the small room of the mill, occupied in part by the two grindstones and the two hoppers that, of course, were in full activity pouring out cebera converted into hot and aromatic flour, each one to its flour bin, there was a row of bags of different sizes waiting. time, that is, placed in the order in which they were to go to the hopper, which was the order in which they had arrived.

Miguel and Pepilla proceeded to place theirs where they belonged.

"Yours' turn comes before mine," said Miguel.

"How deceptive!" answered Pepilla. "Yes, we have arrived together."

—Women always arrive before men.

"But they almost always stay last," replied the miller, who was packaging flour.

Pepilla did not understand what the miller meant; but yes what Miguel was saying, since he smiled at him gratefully, and placed his satchel first.

The two children, as I must classify them as such, not so much because of their age as because of their innocence, came out to the doorway and sat down one next to the other, on a half molar stone, which was the only seat that was free.

They had already calmed down enough that, if the doorway had been a photographer’s office, he would have straightened their lens, ordering them not to move.

Pepilla was a very funny girl, with blue eyes, white and rosy skin, and hair like gold. The candor that we were able to notice in her words harmonized with the candor of her physiognomy.

As for Miguel, he was a very different type, his face was dark; his hair, brown; His eyes, large, black and lively, and his features, although energetic and expressive, somewhat irregular. The spaciousness of his forehead and the development of his head indicated that he was not made for evil thoughts. God, as a divine architect, is not like human architects, who usually make very large cages for very small birds.

Curiosity is the passion that dominates the most until we knock on the rosy doors of adolescence, because since then we only glimpse, it is natural that we want to see.

The women, sitting in the shade of the oak tree, talked a lot, and Pepilla and Miguel listened like idiots, particularly the girl, who had just delivered a donguindo pear that Miguel had given her, carrying the gift until cutting it off with a penknife.

A woman, still young and good-looking, entered the mill and greeted, very upset.

—Woman, what is that, how suffocated are you?

Mother! How shameless that Mr. Roque del Regato is! No wonder they call him Black-Soul!

—So what happened to you with him, woman?

—That he found me and brought out the colors in my face...

He will always have been telling you dwarf things.

—Mother! Do you call him things of lovers, indecencies like those he has told me?

—Woman, tell us something about what has happened, that here some of us are married, others widows, and the rest do not study to be nuns.

—Hey, Miguelillo, go out there and mess with that red girl, because little ones shouldn't hear the conversations of older people.

Miguel and Pepilla turned red, rightly taking the advice they were given as a reprimand, and they headed together towards the old bridge, not without hearing the women say that Miguelillo was growing without shame, and the red one was gleaning as if I wouldn't want to be left behind him.

I don't know what kind of prestige the bridge had for Miguel and Pepilla, whether it was an archaeological or artistic monument, or a touchstone of swimming; But the truth is that the two boys headed towards him without hesitation, holding hands affectionately, conversing with the mischief that we are going to see:

"Jesus," said Pepilla, making a delightful pout. "How courageous it is that they don't let you hear what they're talking about, on the pretext that you're a little girl!" Yes little baby!

—Well yes you are.

—Look how I come to you with my head on my shoulder.

—That’s true.

—And haven't you heard what they said when we left the gate that you were already very high?

—Yes, I have heard it.

—Well then I caught you, because I know a song that says:

Husband and wife make
a good couple
If on the husband’s shoulder
the wife arrives.

—Yes, but since you are not my wife...

—Of course I am. And what are they saying about Don Roque?

—I don't know; but that must be a bad thing.

—They said it would be a thing for lovers. And what is that, Miguel?

—In love they must be... like this as a couple.

Being a couple I already know what it is; but it’s not bad.

—Don't you know?

—Yes, no, no! Don't you remember that day when I went with my father to see yours, and father said to you: "Miguelillo, here is your girlfriend?"

—I do remember that; but she said it as a joke.

—Yes, in jest! You will be like my mother who told her when she got home: "Mrs. Mother, I am Miguel’s girlfriend," and she answers me laughing: "You are still too young to love each other."

We are small, but to love each other it doesn't matter.

—I love you, yes I love you.

"Not me," said Miguel, smiling.

Pepilla pouted, becoming very serious. Miguel wrapped his arm around her head, bringing it closer to her chest, and the girl smiled with joy.

At this point they reached the bridge, and leaned over the parapet with their chests. The parapet was too high for Pepilla to look out of; There was a recess made by the boys, who, leaning there, were pulling stones to throw them into the water, and that recess was perfect for them to look out of, although it was so narrow that as soon as they could fit in it, their bodies were very close together.

That little blonde head, both innocent and thoughtful, was not idle watching the Labaluga stream join the mighty stream that had its origins in Arcentales and Galdames.

—How happy the Labaluga river will be since it joins the other! —Pepilla exclaimed.

—Because?

—Because until he joined the other, he was almost worthless, because he had very little ground and cattle and people disturbed him every moment passing by him. Now, go ahead, let them put windmill wheels on it and see if it moves them, and let them trot on it, and see if it allows it.

—You're right. Don't you know the song that compares women and men to streams and rivers?

—No, and I know many. Let’s see, Miguelillo, show it to me.

—Well, the song says:

As the stream and the river
come together and go to the sea,
so the woman and the man
come together and go to heaven.

—Oh, she sings so beautifully! You and I will also go to heaven together, right, Miguelillo?

—God willing, Pepilla!

And as he said this, Miguel’s eyes became moist, and he felt a mysterious and irresistible desire to draw the little blonde and rosy head of the girl to his chest.

Miguel already penetrated with a little more clarity than Pepilla into the darkness and mysteries of the life in which both took their first steps; But even so, he did not give himself a clear and concrete reason for many things, such as the charm that that innocent girl had for him, and the fear that the idea of ​​not continuing the journey of life with her caused him.

After contemplating the river below the bridge, they wanted to contemplate it up the bridge, and for this purpose they looked out over the parapet on the other side, where they looked for another recess, I don't know if to see better or to be closer together.

"Oh, how scary!" exclaimed the girl, as if taking refuge in Miguel’s protection, when she saw the water, which up the bridge was very dark, both because of its depth and because the banks and the branches of the lateral alder trees took away the light.

With the movement that Pepilla made, a small stone fell off the parapet, and hitting the ivy that covered the arch of the bridge, it knocked into the water a bird’s nest so perfectly made that it remained floating face up without the water penetrating into it.

"What a pity about the nest!" Miguel exclaimed with true distress when he saw that the nest was falling.

—Come on, since he’s old, nothing matters.

—Well, it shouldn't matter, Pepilla? When spring comes, the little birds they made with so much work will come to breed there, and you see how sad they will be when they don't find it! Imagine that your parents with you and your brothers left home for a while, and when they returned they would find the house demolished.

—Here! that’s very different.

—No, it’s the same.

—Come on, deceitful! What do birds have to do with married people?

—They have to see a lot; because the birds, like married people, are. You'll see what I observed last spring coming here. Two birds, which must have been a bird and a bird, each came with a little grass or a little mud in their beak, and they were carefully placing what they brought among the ivy, and when by chance they met, if you saw what festivals were going on, they did!

—Then birds love each other like people.

—Well, they shouldn't love each other!

—Look at you, and how small you are! We are bigger, and my mother said that we were too little to love each other. And then what did the bird and the bird do?

—Another day, when I returned, the bird was keeping the eggs in the nest, and the bird came bringing her a cherry in its beak for her to eat...

—Come on, like my father when he’s on his way (1), he buys something in Balmaseda and brings it to us.

(1) To bring iron ore to the foundries of the Mena Valley.

—After he gave the bird the cherry, the two of them had a lot of celebrations, and the bird flew away, flying... happier! I returned another day, and the bird and the bird already had little birds that raised their heads and opened their beaks calling for their parents...

—Remember that like us, when our people come from the town and we go out to meet them, calling them and asking them what they bring us.

—The parents came from time to time with food in their beaks, and they gave it to them and petted them, and then they went to look for more.

—And the little birds, what did they do then?

—Now you will see. I returned another day, and neither parents nor children were in the nest; but I noticed that little birds were chirping in the alder trees on the other side, and I saw that it was them.

—And how did you meet them?

—I knew them through their parents, who were undoubtedly teaching them how to fly.

—What a thing, Miguel! The same, the same in everything as if they were people! You see, they love each other, they make a house, they caress each other, they have children, they feed them, they teach them... The same, the same as people. And what could have happened to the children?

—They must have gone out there to earn a living.

—Like my brother Santiaguillo. So, the same thing happens in bird nests as in our houses.

—Haven't I told you, silly, that birds look like married people?

—It’s true that they look alike.

"You're not bad birds!" exclaimed, as a preliminary to a loud laugh, the booming voice of Don Roque del Regato, who had stopped to listen to the innocent conversation of the children, on the other side of the bridge.

The arch on this one is a little high; so that from the decline of one side the decline of the other is not discovered. As Miguel and Pepilla were chatting, leaning over the parapet almost over the abutment on the Arenao side, they did not see Don Roque arrive, nor did they feel the footsteps of the horse he was leading, coming from the Ballibian plain, where the road in summer was quite a compact, without any stone, to the ledge of the bridge.

Miguel and Pepilla were startled and embarrassed when they heard Don Roque, because even hearing us pray embarrasses us when we believe that no one heard us and we find that they heard us.

Pepilla did not know Don Roque, but Miguel did know him, because going up through the cattle to Escachabelza she had seen him having fun watching the eagles carry off the lambs and goats, and the boys from Regato, with whom Miguel used to hang out there, they had told him horrors about Don Roque, whom they called Almanegra.

Don Roque appeared over the top of the bridge, with his arm stuck in the horse’s bridle.

—Hello boy! So that red girl is your girlfriend? —He asked Miguel.

Miguel lowered his head in shame and did not answer.

—Boy, have you left your tongue at home?

Miguel became angry, not with shame, but with rage at the tone with which Don Roque asked him.

"Whose are you, rojilla?" added Don Roque, addressing the girl with a smile that she believed to be benevolent, as she hastened to answer:

—From Antonio el del Castañar.

—When you are even a couple of years older, I have to tell your father to make you serve in my house.

"She doesn't need to serve in your house or in anyone else's," Miguel finally replied, no longer being able to resist the anger that Don Roque’s conversation caused him.

—Hello! Have you already recovered your tongue? Be careful, boy, I may cut it off for you.

Pepilla was frightened by the tone and the angry expression with which Don Roque spoke and looked at Miguel, and exclaimed, wanting to escape:

—Miguel, let’s go, this man is bad.

"Wait until I catch you," said Don Roque, making a quick movement as if to catch her.

The horse raised its head with such violence, upon feeling the pull of the rein, that it tilted Don Roque backwards, and he slipped due to that inclination and that of the ground, fell on his back full length, bursting into blasphemies and dirty interjections.

The horse’s reins, which had strong straps, had slipped into Don Roque’s armpit, and since he could not get rid of them, because when he fell he had hurt his arm enough that he could barely move it, he was in imminent danger. danger of the horse dragging him before he managed to get up.

Miguel understood this danger when he saw that a new jerk of the horse elicited a new blasphemy from Don Roque, and he began to drag him; and quickly taking the penknife out of his pocket, he cut the reins, with which the horse retreated, fleeing towards the Ballibian plain.

Pepilla, dazed and frightened, had run, not towards the mill, but towards the opposite side, as if by instinct she were going to ask for protection from her mother, who was on that side, and Miguel, once Don Roque was free from all danger, He only thought about running after her to calm her down.

They both stopped on the road, above the inn, where the Cobijon climb begins, and from there they saw Don Roque get up, make sure he had the cat in the inside pocket of his jacket, and limp towards the plain of Ballibian.

Apparently, the horse had stopped nearby, because Don Roque, almost immediately after he disappeared in the oak grove, reappeared leading him by the reins.

After the bridge, between the river and the hill, there is a path that goes upstream in front of the Arenao mill, heading towards Galdames.

That’s where Don Roque took foot, and that’s where he would have taken before if curiosity and malevolence had not made him turn his way.

As he walked along the bank of the river he saw the poor boys, still not free from the fright that his brutality had caused them, heading towards the mill, and he greeted Miguel, brandishing his open hand as a sign of threat.

The one with the black soul threatened the one with the white soul. Alas, this is so old, dating back to the times of Cain and Abel!

VI.

The forge and the Ballibian mill, which had greatly pleased Don Roque, judging by the good humor with which he came to see them when, like the disgusting slime falls into the perfumed and purest rose, he fell into the innocent and beautiful childlike idyll. of the Arenao bridge, were not for him, because Don Roque was hunting for bargains, and the Salazares de los Ribas did not want to provide him with the one he was aiming for.

The rumors of upcoming bankruptcies of some commercial houses in Bilbao continued, and then Don Roque decided to collect the capital he had in one of the same town, to hide it seven states underground, while he was not offered the opportunity to give him lucrative employment. and sure, like the one he had hoped to give him by purchasing the Ballibian ironworks and mill.

It was an afternoon in the immediate winter, which had been anticipated with one of the heaviest snowfalls known on the Cantabrian coast, where the snow barely sets, except in the heights. If the harshness of the weather had saddened the residents of Regato because their livestock, and particularly the sheep and goats, were raging with hunger, being unable to graze except at the bottom of the narrow valley, since the mountains had been covered with snow for a few weeks. Don Roque was very happy with that crudeness, because, as the eagles did not find prey in the heights, they continually hovered over the valley in search of it, and Don Roque had great fun every day, watching how they snatched his claws every lamb, kid, dog or kitten, which for this purpose he placed on the masonry supports of the door of his house.

Don Roque, mounted on his horse and armed with his shotgun, was going from Bilbao, up the little valley. It kept attracting the attention of the neighbors who saw him passing by that he was carrying the shotgun, and also that the butt of a pistol was showing in each of the holsters of the chair, since he never took those precautions when he went to Bilbao, which was barely two days away leagues from his house, along a continuously populated road.

Almanegra must have brought something that was very heavy from Bilbao, because while with one hand he controlled the reins of the horse, with the other he supported the weight of one of the flaps of the coat.

Upon reaching the door of his house, he dismounted from the horse, and taking out of the interior pocket of his coat the usual cat, which then appeared more inflated and heavier than ever, he placed it on one of the supports, while he loosened the horse’s girth. He unhooked the shotgun and picked up the pistols, whose operation the maid was waiting at the doorway, to take the horse to the stable.

Suddenly, Don Roque heard a noise behind him that, despite being strange to others, was not strange to him, and giving a cry of horror, he turned towards the stool where he had placed the cat.

The cat was no longer on the stool but in the claws of a huge eagle, which was soaring with it through space!!

Don Roque, in the height of terror, hastily took the shotgun, aimed at the eagle and fired; but the eagle continued to soar with its prey, undoubtedly untouched by the bullet.

The contents of the cat, in ounces of gold and in documents payable to the bearer, constituted all the capital that remained to Don Roque.

This, desperate, crazy, furious, blaspheming and denying everything divine and human, took the shotgun and headed towards the mountain where the eagles used to perch, and where he had so often had brutal fun watching them snatch the lambs exposed by him to their rapacity and voracity on the white rock, at whose foot the innocent sheep called them painfully and uselessly.

The night closed, and hours and hours passed; It was dawn, and Don Roque had not returned. Some residents of Tellitu believed they had seen him on the white rock, in the light glistening from the snow that covered the mountain.

The same neighbors, moved by compassion, despite the fact that he had done so little to deserve it, went up the mountain in search of him, believing that he had fallen on the road frozen from the cold. For a long time they recognized their footprints in the icy, hard snow, and finally, they noticed that, descending into the Escachabelza hollow, they were heading to the edge of the chasm, and there they disappeared.

When they were thinking whether he had fallen into that abyss, they saw a resident of Urállaga coming, who was crossing the mountain to descend to the Regato, and having gone out to meet him and asked him what was new in Urállaga, he answered that there was great news: that of the blood-colored torrent of the Magdalena cave having flowed that morning.

There was no longer any doubt that Blacksoul, desperate not to find the treasure that the eagle had taken from him, had voluntarily rushed into that deep chasm and broken into pieces at its bottom!

There was at that time in Escáuriza, the main neighborhood of Regato, a very good priest and very fond of hunting, who had the obligation to say mass in the parish of San Roque, located in the same neighborhood.

One day, after hunting in the mountains, he went around the houses of the neighbors whom Alma-Negra had ruined with lawsuits, and he distributed among them a large quantity of ounces of gold, telling them that it was an order that had been given to him under secrecy of confession.

All this is mysterious, dark and almost implausible; but it is the clearest and most truthful thing that I have been able to find out about that Black Soul of whom my mother spoke, pointing me towards the dark cavern of Magdalena de Urállaga, when I was living my happy and credulous childhood in the foothills of the Western mountains.