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The Trapper's Daughter: A Story of the Rocky Mountains

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Title: The Trapper's Daughter: A Story of the Rocky Mountains

Author: Gustave Aimard

Translator: Sir Lascelles Wraxall


        
Release date: February 17, 2013 [eBook #42119]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42119

Credits: Produced by Camilo Bernard and Marc D'Hooghe (Scans at the Internet Archive, by Google)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAPPER'S DAUGHTER: A STORY OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ***
THE TRAPPER'S DAUGHTER

STORY OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

BY

GUSTAVE AIMARD.

AUTHOR OF "PRAIRIE FLOWER," "PIRATES OF THE PRAIRIES," ETC.

LONDON

WARD AND LOCK

158, FLEET STREET.

MDCCCLXI.




CONTENTS.

           I. The Jacal
          II. Inside the Cabin
         III. A Conversation
          IV. A Backward Glance
           V. The Hacienda Quemada
          VI. The Apaches
         VII. The Hill of the Mad Buffalo
        VIII. Black Cat and Unicorn
          IX. The Meeting
           X. A War Stratagem
          XI. In the Forest
         XII. The Missionary
        XIII. Return to Life
         XIV. An Old Acquaintance of the Reader
          XV. Convalescence
         XVI. An Accomplice
        XVII. Mother and Son
       XVIII. The Consultation
         XIX. Bloodson
          XX. Red Cedar
         XXI. Curumilla
        XXII. El Mal Paso
       XXIII. El Rastreador
        XXIV. The Camp in the Mountains
         XXV. A Game at Hazard
        XXVI. Nathan Paints Himself
       XXVII. A Trail in the Air
      XXVIII. The Fight with the Grizzly
        XXIX. A Mother's Love
         XXX. The Sorcerer
        XXXI. White Gazelle
       XXXII. The Escape
      XXXIII. Plot and Counterplot
       XXXIV. Cousin Bruin
        XXXV. The Hunt Continued
       XXXVI. The Last Refuge
      XXXVII. The Casket
     XXXVIII. Smoke in the Mountains
       XXXIX. The Boar at Bay
          XL. Lynch Law





PREFACE.


In the present volume another series of Indian adventures is concluded,
and the further career of the hero is described in the series beginning
with the "Tiger-slayer." It must be understood, however, that the
stories are not arbitrarily connected--each is complete in itself; but
those who have read one volume will, I hope, be sufficiently interested
in the hero to desire to know more of his career. The following,
therefore, is the order in which the volumes should be read:--


     1. TRAIL HUNTER.
     2. PIRATES OF THE PRAIRIES.
     3. THE TRAPPER'S DAUGHTER.
     4. TIGER SLAYER.
     6. GOLD SEEKERS.
     7. INDIAN CHIEF.


In all probability, M. Aimard will favour us with other volumes; but, in
the mean time, the above can be read collectively or separately, with
equal interest.


                                                       LASCELLES WRAXALL





THE TRAPPER'S DAUGHTER BY GUSTAVE AIMARD




CHAPTER I.

THE JACAL.


About three in the afternoon, a horseman, dressed in the Mexican
costume, was galloping along the banks of a stream, an affluent of the
Gila, whose capricious windings compelled him to make countless detours.
This man, while constantly keeping his hand on his weapons, and watching
for every event, urged his horse on by shouts and spur, as if anxious to
reach his journey's end.

The wind blew fiercely, the heat was oppressive, the grasshoppers
uttered their discordant cries under the herbage that sheltered them;
the birds slowly described wide circles in the air, uttering shrill
notes at intervals: coppery clouds were incessantly passing athwart the
sun, whose pale, sickly beams possessed no strength; in short, all
presaged a terrible storm.

The traveller seemed to notice nought of this; bowed over his horse's
neck, with his eyes fixed ahead, he increased his speed, without
noticing the heavy drops of rain that already fell, and the hoarse
rolling of distant thunder which began to be heard.

Still this man, had he wished it, could easily have sheltered himself
under the thick shade of the aged trees in the virgin forest which he
had been skirting for more than an hour, and thus let the heaviest part
of the storm pass; but a weightier interest, doubtless, urged him on,
for, while increasing his speed, he did not think of drawing his zarapé
over his shoulders to protect him from the rain, but contented himself,
as each gust of wind howled past him, with drawing his hat a little
tighter on his head, while repeating to his horse, in a sharp tone:

"Forward! Forward!"

In the meanwhile, the stream, whose banks the traveller was following,
grew gradually narrower, and at a certain spot the bank was completely
obstructed by an undergrowth of shrubs and interlaced creepers, which
completely prevented any approach. On reaching this point the traveller
stopped; he dismounted, carefully inspected the vicinity, took his horse
by the bridle, and led it into a copse, where he concealed it; attaching
it with his lasso to the trunk of a large tree, after removing the
_bozal_ to let it browse at liberty.

"Rest here, Negro," he said, as he softly patted it; "do not neigh, for
the enemy is at hand--I shall soon return."

The intelligent animal seemed to comprehend the words its master
addressed to it, for it stretched out his head and rubbed it against his
chest.

"Good, good, Negro! Wait awhile!"

The stranger then took from his holsters a brace of pistols, which he
placed in his girdle, threw his rifle on his shoulder, and started
hurriedly in the direction of the river. He buried himself without
hesitation in the shrubs that bordered the stream, carefully separating
the branches which at each step barred his progress. On reaching the
edge of the water he stopped for a moment, bent forward, seemed to be
listening, and then drew himself up, muttering:

"There is no one; all is safe."

He then stepped on a mass of intertwined lianas, which extended from one
bank to the other, and formed a natural bridge. This bridge, apparently
so slight, was firm, and though it oscillated under the traveller's
footsteps, he crossed it in a few seconds. He had scarce reached the
other bank, when a girl emerged from a clump of trees which concealed
her.

"At last!" she said, as she ran up to him: "oh! I was afraid you would
not come, Don Pablo."

"Ellen," the young man answered, with his whole soul in his glance,
"death alone would keep me away."

The traveller was Don Pablo Zarate; the girl, Ellen, Red Cedar's
daughter.[1]

"Come," she said.

The Mexican followed her, and they walked on for some time without
exchanging a word. When they had passed the chaparral which bordered the
river, they saw a short distance before them a wretched _jacal_, which
leant solitary and silent against a rock.

"There is my home," the maiden said, with a sad smile.

Don Pablo sighed, but made no reply, and they continued to walk in the
direction of the jacal, which they soon reached.

"Sit down, Don Pablo," the maiden went on, as she offered her comrade a
stool, on which he sank. "I am alone; my father and two brothers went
off this morning at sunrise."

"Are you not afraid," Don Pablo answered, "of remaining thus alone in
the desert, exposed to innumerable dangers, so far from all help?"

"What can I do? Has not this life been ever mine?"

"Does your father go away often?"

"Only during the last few days. I know not what he fears, but he and my
brothers seem sad and preoccupied, they go on long journeys, and when
they return quite worn out, the words they address to me are harsh and
snappish."

"Poor child!" said Don Pablo, "I can tell you the cause of these long
journeys."

"Do you fancy I have not guessed it?" she replied; "No, no, the horizon
is too gloomy around us for me not to perceive the gathering storm which
will soon burst over us; but," she added, with an effort, "let us speak
of ourselves, the moments are precious; what have you done?"

"Nothing," the young man said, mournfully; "all my researches have been
in vain."

"That is strange," Ellen muttered; "and yet the coffer cannot be lost."

"I am as convinced of that as you are; but into whose hands has it
fallen? That is what I cannot say."

The maiden reflected.

"When did you notice its disappearance?" Don Pablo went on a moment
after.

"Only a few minutes after Harry's death; frightened by the sounds of the
fight and the fearful uproar of the earthquake, I was half mad. Still, I
can remember a circumstance which will doubtless put us on the right
track."

"Speak, Ellen, speak, and whatever is to be done I will do."

The girl looked at him for a moment with an indefinable expression. She
bent over to him, laid her hand on his arm, and said, in a voice soft as
a bird's song:

"Don Pablo, a frank and loyal explanation between us is indispensable."

"I do not understand you," the young man stammered, as he let his eyes
fall.

"Yes you do," she replied, with a sad smile; "you understand me, Don
Pablo; but no matter, as you pretend to be ignorant of what I wish to
say to you, I will explain myself in such a way that any further
misconception will be impossible."

"Speak! Ellen; though I do not suspect your meaning, I have a foreboding
of misfortune."

"Yes," she continued, "you are right; a misfortune is really concealed
under what I have to say to you, if you do not consent to grant me the
favour I implore of you."

Don Pablo rose.

"Why feign longer? Since I cannot induce you to give up your plan,
Ellen, the explanation you ask of me is needless. Do you believe," he
went on, as he walked in great agitation up and down the jacal, "that I
have not already regarded the strange position in which we find
ourselves from every side? Fatality has impelled us toward each other by
one of those accidents which human wisdom cannot foresee. I love you,
Ellen, I love you with all the strength of my soul, you, the daughter of
the enemy of my family, of the man whose hands are still red with my
sister's blood, which he shed by assassinating her coldly, in the most
infamous manner. I know that, I tremble at thinking of my love, which,
in the prejudiced eyes of the world, must seem monstrous. All that you
can say to me, I have said repeatedly to myself; but an irresistible
force drags me on this fatal incline. Will, reason, resolution, all are
broken before the hope of seeing you for a moment and exchanging a few
words with you. I love you, Ellen, so as to leave for your sake,
relatives, friends, family, aye, the whole universe."

The young man uttered these words with sparkling eye, and in a sharp
stern voice, like a man whose resolution is immovable. Ellen let her
head droop, and tears slowly ran down her pallid cheeks.

"You weep!" he exclaimed, "Oh Heavens! Can I be mistaken? You do not
love me?"

"I love you, Don Pablo!" she replied in a deep voice; "yes, I love you
more than myself; but alas! That love will cause our ruin, for an
insurmountable barrier separates us."

"Perhaps," he exclaimed impetuously; "no, Ellen, you are mistaken, you
are not, you cannot be the daughter of Red Cedar. Oh, that coffer, that
accursed coffer, I would give half the time Heaven will still grant me
to live, could I recover it. In it, I feel certain, are the proofs I
seek."

"Why cheat ourselves with a wild hope, Don Pablo? I believed too lightly
in words uttered unmeaningly by the squatter and his wife: my childhood
recollections deceived us, that is unhappily too certain. I am now
convinced of it: all proves it to me, and I am really that man's
daughter."

Don Pablo stamped his foot angrily.

"Never, never," he shouted, "it is impossible, the vulture does not pair
with the dove, demons cannot be betrothed to angels. No, that villain is
not your father! Listen, Ellen; I have no proof of what I assert--all
seems, on the contrary, to prove that I am wrong; appearances are quite
against me; but still, mad as it may seem, I am sure that I am right,
and that my heart does not deceive me when it tells me that man is a
stranger to you."

Ellen sighed.

Don Pablo continued.

"See, Ellen, the hour has arrived for me to leave you. Remaining longer
with you would compromise your safety; give me then the information I am
awaiting."

"For what good?" she murmured despairingly, "The coffer is lost."

"I am not of your opinion; I believe, on the contrary, that it has
fallen into the hands of a man who intends to make use of it, for what
purpose I am ignorant, but I shall know it, be assured."

"As you insist on it, listen to me, then, Don Pablo, though what I have
told you is extremely vague."

"A gleam, however weak it may be, will suffice to guide me, and perhaps
enable me to discover what I seek."

"May Heaven grant it!" she sighed; "This is all I can tell you, and it
is quite impossible for me to say certainly whether I am not mistaken,
for, at the moment, terror so troubled my senses that I cannot say
positively I saw what I fancied I saw."

"Well, go on," the young man said, impatiently.

"When Harry fell, struck by a bullet, and was writhing in the last
throes, two were near him, one already wounded, Andrés Garote the
ranchero, the other, who stooped over his body, and seemed riffling his
clothes--"

"Who was he?"

"Fray Ambrosio. I even fancy I can remember seeing him leave the poor
hunter with a badly restrained movement of joy, and hiding in his bosom
something which I could not distinguish."

"No doubt but he had seized the coffer."

"That is probable, but I cannot say positively, for I was, I repeat, in
a condition which rendered it impossible for me to perceive anything
clearly."

"Well," said Don Pablo, pursuing his idea; "what became of Ambrosio?"

"I do not know; after the earthquake, my father and his comrades rushed
in different directions, each seeking his safety in flight. My father,
more than any other, had an interest in concealing his trail, the monk
left us almost immediately, and I have not seen him since."

"Has Red Cedar never spoken about him before you?"

"Never."

"That is strange! No matter. I swear to you, Ellen, that I will find him
again, if I have to pursue him to hell; it is that scoundrel who has
stolen the coffer."

"Don Pablo," the maiden said as she rose, "the sun is setting, my father
and brothers will soon return, we must part."

"You are right, Ellen, I leave you."

"Farewell, Don Pablo, the storm is bursting; who knows if you will reach
your friends' bivouac safe and sound?"

"I hope so, Ellen, but if you say to me farewell, I reply that we shall
meet again: believe me, dear girl, put your trust in Heaven, for if we
have been permitted to love, it is because that love will produce our
happiness."

At this moment lightning flashed across the sky, and the thunder burst
ominously.

"There is the storm," the maiden exclaimed; "go, go, in Heaven's name!"

"Good bye, my well-beloved, good bye," the young man said, as he rushed
from the jacal; "put your trust in Heaven, and in me."

"Oh, Heaven!" Ellen exclaimed, as she fell on her knees, "Grant that my
presentiments have not deceived me, or I shall die of despair."


[Footnote 1: See the Trail Hunter and Pirates of the Prairies.]




CHAPTER II.

INSIDE THE CABIN.


After Don Pablo's departure, the maiden remained for a long time
thoughtful, paying no attention to the mournful sounds of the raging
tempest, or the hoarse whistling of the wind, every gust of which shook
the jacal, and threatened to carry it away. Ellen was reflecting on her
conversation with the Mexican; the future appeared to her sad, gloomy,
and storm-laden. In spite of all the young man had said to her, hope had
not penetrated to her heart; she felt herself dragged involuntarily down
the incline of a precipice, into which she must fall: all told her that
a catastrophe was imminent, and that the hand of God would soon fall
terribly and implacably on the man whose crimes had wearied justice.

Toward midnight, the sound of horses was heard, gradually approaching,
and several persons stopped before the jacal. Ellen lit a torch of
candlewood and opened the door: three men entered. They were Red Cedar
and his two sons, Nathan and Sutter.

For about a month past, an inexplicable change had taken place in the
squatter's way of acting and speaking. This brutal man, whose thin lips
were constantly curled by an ironical smile, who ever had in his mouth
mockery and cruel words, who only dreamed of murder and robbery, and to
whom remorse was unknown, had been for some time sad and morose: a
secret restlessness seemed to devour him; at times, when he did not
fancy himself observed, he gave the girl long glances of inexplicable
meaning, and uttered profound sighs while shaking his head in a
melancholy way.

Ellen had noticed this change, which she could not account for, and
which only augmented her alarm; for it needed very grave reasons thus to
alter a nature so energetic and resolute as Red Cedar's.

But what were these reasons? Ellen sought them in vain, but nothing gave
an embodiment to her suspicions. The squatter had always been kind to
her, so far as his savage training permitted it, treating her with a
species of rough affection, and softening, as far as was possible, the
harshness of his voice when he addressed her. But since the change which
had taken place in him, this affection had become real tenderness. He
watched anxiously over the maiden, continually striving to procure her
those comforts and trifles which so please women, which it is almost
impossible to procure in the desert, and hence possess a double value.

Happy when he saw a faint smile play on the lips of the poor girl, whose
sufferings he guessed without divining the cause, he anxiously examined
her, when her pallor and red eyes told him of sleepless nights and tears
shed during his absence. This man, in whom every tender feeling seemed
to be dead, had suddenly felt his heart beat through the vibration of a
secret fibre, of whose existence he had ever been ignorant, and he felt
himself re-attached to humanity by the most holy of passions, paternal
love. There was something at once grand and terrible in the affection of
this man of blood for this frail and delicate maiden. There was
something of the wild beast even in the caresses he lavished on her; a
strange blending of a mother's tenderness with the tiger's jealousy.

Red Cedar only lived for his daughter and through his daughter. With
affection shame had returned, that is to say, while continuing his life
of brigandage, he feigned, before Ellen, to have completely renounced
it, in order to adopt the existence of the wood rangers and hunters. The
maiden was only half duped by this falsehood: but how did it concern
her? Completely absorbed in her love, all that was beyond it became to
her indifferent.

The squatter and his sons were sad, and seemed buried in thought when
they entered the jacal; they sat down without uttering a word. Ellen
hastened to place on the table the food she had prepared for them during
their absence.

"Supper is ready," she said.

The three men silently approached the table.

"Do you not eat with us, child?" Red Cedar asked.

"I am not hungry," she replied.

"Hum!" said Nathan, "Ellen is dainty--she prefers Mexican cookery to
ours."

Ellen blushed, but made no reply; Red Cedar smote the table with his
fist angrily.

"Silence!" he shouted; "How does it concern you whether your sister eats
or not? She is at liberty to do as she likes here, I suppose."

"I don't say the contrary," Nathan growled; "still she seems to affect a
dislike to eat with us."

"You are a scoundrel! I repeat to you that your sister is mistress here,
and no one has a right to make any remarks to her."

Nathan looked down angrily, and began eating.

"Come here, child," Red Cedar continued, as he gave his rough voice all
the gentleness of which it was susceptible, "come here, that I may give
you a trifle I have bought you."

The maiden approached and Red Cedar drew from his pocket a gold watch
attached to a long chain.

"Look you," he said, as he put it round her neck, "I know that you have
desired a watch for a long time, so here is one I bought of some
travellers we met on the prairie."

While uttering these words, the squatter felt himself blush
involuntarily, for he lied; the watch had been torn from the body of a
woman killed by his hands when attacking a caravan. Ellen perceived this
blush; she took off the watch and returned it to Red Cedar without
saying a word.

"What are you about, girl?" he said, surprised at this refusal, which he
was far from expecting; "Why don't you take this toy, which, I repeat
to you, I procured expressly for you?"

The maiden looked at him sternly, and replied in a firm voice:

"Because there is blood on that watch, and it is the produce of a
robbery--perhaps of a murder."

The squatter turned pale; instinctively he looked at the watch, and
there was really a patch of blood on the case. Nathan burst into a
coarse and noisy laugh.

"Bravo!" he said; "Well done--the little one guessed the truth at the
first look."

Red Cedar, who had let his head droop at his daughter's reproaches, drew
himself up as if a viper had stung him.

"I told you to be silent," he exclaimed, furiously; and seizing the
stool on which he had been sitting, he hurled it at his son's head.

The latter avoided the blow and drew his knife--a struggle was imminent.
Sutter, leaning against the walls of the jacal, with his arms crossed
and his pipe in his mouth, prepared, with an ironical smile, to remain
spectator of the fight; but Ellen threw herself boldly between the
squatter and his son.

"Stay!" she shrieked; "Stay, in Heaven's name! What, Nathan, would you
strike your father? And are you not afraid to hurt your first-born son?"

"May the devil twist my father's neck!" Nathan replied; "Does he take me
for a child, or does he fancy I am disposed to put up with his insults?
By heavens! We are bandits; our only law is force, and we recognise no
other. My father will ask my pardon, and I will see whether I forgive
him."

"Ask your pardon, dog!" the squatter shouted; and bounding like a tiger
with a movement swifter than thought, he seized the young man by the
throat and fell heavily on him.

"Ah, ah!" he continued, as he placed his knee on his chest, "The old
lion is good yet. Your life is in my hands--what do you say? Will you
play with me again?"

Nathan howled as he writhed like a serpent to free himself from the
grasp that mastered him. At length he recognised his impotence, and
confessed himself conquered.

"It is good," he said; "you are stronger than I--you can kill me."

"No," said Ellen, "that shall not be. Rise, father, and set Nathan free;
and you, brother, give me your knife--should such a contest take place
between father and son?"

She stooped down and picked up the weapon which the young man had let
fall from his hand. Red Cedar rose.

"Let that serve you as a lesson," he said, "and teach you to be more
prudent in future."

The young man, angered and ashamed of his downfall, sat down again
without a word. The squatter turned to his daughter, and offered her the
watch a second time.

"Will you have it?" he asked her.

"No," she replied, resolutely.

"Very good."

Without any apparent passion, he let the watch fall, and, putting his
heel on it, reduced it to powder. The rest of the supper passed off
without incident; the three men ate greedily, not speaking to each
other, and waited on by Ellen. When the pipes were lit, the maiden
wished to retire to the compartment which served as her bedroom.

"Stay, my child," Red Cedar said. "I have to speak with you."

Ellen sat down in a corner of the jacal and waited. The three men went
on smoking silently for some time, while outside the storm still
continued. At length, the young men shook the ashes out of their pipes,
and rose.

"Then," said Nathan, "all is arranged."

"It is," replied Red Cedar.

"At what hour will they come to fetch us?" Sutter asked.

"At an hour before sunrise."

"Very good."

The brothers lay down on the ground, rolled themselves in their furs,
and soon fell asleep. Red Cedar remained for some time plunged in
thought, while Ellen did not stir. At length he raised his head.

"Come hither, child," he said.

She came up and stood before him.

"Sit down by my side."

"For what good, father? Speak, I am listening," she answered.

The squatter was visibly embarrassed; he knew not how to commence the
conversation, but, after some moments' hesitation, he said:

"You are ill, Ellen."

The maiden smiled sadly.

"Did you not notice it before today, father?" she replied.

"No, my child; I have noticed your sadness for a long time past. You are
not suited for a desert life."

"That is true," was all she said.

"We are about to leave the prairie," Red Cedar went on.

Ellen gave an almost imperceptible start.

"Soon?" she asked.

"This very day; in a few hours we shall be on the road."

The girl looked at him.

"Then," she said, "we will draw nearer to the civilised frontier?"

"Yes," he answered, with considerable emotion.

Ellen smiled mournfully.

"Why deceive me, father?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" he exclaimed; "I do not understand you."

"On the contrary, you understand me thoroughly, and it would be better
to explain your thoughts to me frankly than try to deceive me for a
purpose I cannot divine. Alas!" she continued, with a sigh, "Am I not
your daughter, and must undergo the consequences of the life you have
chosen?"

The squatter frowned.

"I believe that your words contain a reproach," he replied. "Life is
scarce opening for you; then how do you dare to judge the actions of a
man?"

"I judge nothing, father. As you say, life is scarce opening for me;
still, however short my existence may have been, it has been one long
suffering."

"That is true, poor girl," the squatter said, gently; "pardon me, I
should be so glad to see you happy. Alas! Heaven has not blessed my
efforts, though all I have done has been for your sake."

"Do not say that, father," she quickly exclaimed; "do not thus make me
morally your accomplice, or render me responsible for your crimes, which
I execrate, else you would impel me to desire death."

"Ellen, Ellen! you misunderstood what I said to you; I never had the
intention," he said, much embarrassed.

"No more of this," she went on; "we are going, you said, I think,
father? Our retreat is discovered, we must fly; that is what you wish to
tell me?"

"Yes," he said, "it is that, though I cannot imagine how you have
learned it."

"No matter, father. And in what direction shall we proceed?"

"Temporarily we shall conceal ourselves in the Sierra de los Comanches."

"In order that our pursuers may lose our trail?"

"Yes, for that reason, and for another," he added, in a low voice.

But, however low he spoke, Ellen heard him.

"What other?"

"It does not concern you, child, but myself alone."

"You are mistaken, father," she said, with considerable resolution;
"from the moment that I am your accomplice, I must know all. Perhaps,"
she added, with a sad smile, "I may be able to give you good advice."

"I will do without it."

"One word more. You have numerous enemies, father."

"Alas! Yes," he said, carelessly.

"Who are those who compel you to fly today?"

"The most implacable of all, Don Miguel Zarate."

"The man whose daughter you assassinated in so cowardly a way."

Red Cedar struck the table passionately.

"Ellen!" he shouted.

"Do you know any other appellation more correct than that?" she asked,
coldly.

The bandit looked down.

"Then," she continued, "you are about to fly--fly forever?"

"What is to be done?" he muttered.

Ellen bent over him, laid her white hand on his arm, and regarded him
fixedly.

"Who are the men about to join you in a few hours?" she asked.

"Fray Ambrosio, Andrés Garote--our old friends, in short."

"That is just," the girl murmured, with a gesture of disgust, "a common
danger brings you together. Well, my father, you and your friends are
all cowards."

At this violent insult which his daughter coldly hurled in his teeth,
the squatter turned pale, and rose suddenly.

"Silence!" he shouted, furiously.

"The tiger, when attacked in its lair, turns on the hunters," the girl
went on, without displaying any emotion; "why do you not follow their
example?"

A sinister smile played round the corners of the bandit's mouth.

"I have something better in my pocket," he said, with an accent
impossible to describe.

The maiden looked at him for a moment.

"Take care," she at length said to him in a deep voice; "take care! The
hand of God is on you, and His vengeance will be terrible."

After uttering these words, she slowly withdrew and entered the room set
apart for her. The bandit stood for a moment, crushed by this anathema;
but he soon threw up his head, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and
lay down by the side of his sons, muttering in a hoarse and ironical
voice:

"God! Does He exist?"

Soon, no other sound was audible in the jacal saving that produced by
the breathing of the three men. Ellen was praying fervently, while the
storm redoubled its fury outside.




CHAPTER III.

A CONVERSATION.


On leaving the cabin, Don Pablo recrossed the river, and found his way
back to the thicket where he had tied his horse up. The poor animal,
terrified by the lightning and the hoarse rolling of the thunder,
uttered a snort of pleasure at seeing its master again. Without loss of
a moment, the young man leaped into the saddle and started at a gallop.

The rain fell in torrents, the wind whistled violently, the young man
feared at each moment losing his way, and groped through the immense
solitude which stretched out before him, and which the darkness
prevented him from sounding. Like all well-gifted men habituated to an
adventurous life, Don Pablo de Zarate was well fitted for struggling.
His will grew in proportion to the difficulties that rose before him,
and instead of discouraging him, obstacles only confirmed him in his
resolution. So soon as he had chosen an object, he reached it in spite
of all.

His love for Ellen, born, as it were, through a thunderclap--as, in
fact, most true loves spring into life, where the unexpected always
plays the chief part--this love, we say, for which he was in no way
prepared, and which surprised him at the moment which he least dreamed
of it, had assumed, without his will, gigantic proportions, which all
the reasons which should have rendered it impossible, only augmented.

Although he bore the deepest hatred for Red Cedar, and, had the
opportunity presented itself, would have killed him without hesitation
like a dog, his love for Ellen had become a worship, an adoration about
which he no longer reasoned, but which he endured with that intoxication
and that delight felt in forbidden things. This girl, who had remained
so pure and chaste amid this family of bandits, possessed an
irresistible attraction for him. He had said in his conversation with
her he was intimately convinced that she could not be Red Cedar's
daughter. It would have been impossible for him to give his reasons; but
with that tenacity of purpose which only some few men possess he
necessarily sought the proofs of this conviction which nothing
supported, and, even more, he sought these proofs with the certainty of
finding them.

For a month past, he had discovered, by an inexplicable chance, Red
Cedar's retreat, which Valentine, the skilful trail-hunter, had been
unable to detect. Don Pablo had immediately profited by his good
fortune to see again the girl he had believed lost for ever. This
unexpected success appeared to him a good omen; and every morning,
without saying anything to his friends, he mounted his horse upon the
first excuse that offered, and rode thirty miles to speak with her he
loved for a few moments.

Every consideration was silent in presence of his love: he allowed his
friends to exhaust themselves in vain researches, preciously keeping his
secret in order to be happy, at least, for a few days; for he perfectly
foresaw that the moment must arrive when Red Cedar would be discovered.
But, in the meanwhile, he enjoyed the present. With all those who love
in this way, the future is nothing, the present is all in all.

Don Pablo galloped on by the glare of the flashes, feeling neither the
rain that inundated him, nor the wind that howled round his head.
Absorbed in his love, he thought of the conversation he had held with
Ellen, and pleased himself with recalling all the words that had been
exchanged during the hour, which slipped away almost too rapidly.

All at once, his horse, to which he paid no attention, neighed, and Don
Pablo raised his head intuitively. Ten paces ahead of him, a horseman
was standing motionless across his path.

"Ah, ah!" said Don Pablo, as he drew himself up on the saddle, and
cocked his pistols; "You are very late on the road, comrade. Let me
pass, if you please."

"I am no later than yourself, Don Pablo," was the immediate response,
"since I meet you."

"Halloh!" the young man shouted, as he uncocked his pistols, and
returned them to his holsters; "What the deuce are you doing here, Don
Valentine?"

"As you see, I am waiting."

"Whom can you be waiting for at this advanced hour?"

"For yourself, Don Pablo."

"For me!" the Mexican said in surprise; "That is strange."

"Not so much as you suppose. I desire to have a conversation with you,
which no one must overhear; and as that was impossible in camp, I came
to wait for you as you passed: that is simple enough, I fancy."

"It is; but what is less so, is the hour and spot you have selected, my
friend."

"Why so?"

"Hang it, a terrible storm is let loose over our heads; we have no place
here to shelter us; and I repeat, it is nearer morning than night."

"That is true; but time pressed, and I could not select the hour to my
fancy."

"You alarm me, my friend; has anything new occurred?"

"Nothing that I know of, up to the present; but ere long we shall see
something, you may feel assured."

The young man stifled a sigh, but made no reply. While exchanging these
hurried sentences, the Trail-hunter and the Mexican had joined, and now
rode side by side. Valentine continued--

"Follow me for a few moments. I will lead you to a spot where we can
converse at ease, without fear of being disturbed."

"What you have to say to me must be very important?"

"You shall soon judge of that."

"And are you going to lead me far?"

"Only a few paces; to a grotto which I noticed in the flashes."

"Let us go then."

The two men spurred their horses, and galloped silently side by side;
they went on thus for hardly a quarter of an hour in the direction of a
thick chaparral which skirted the river.

"We have arrived," said Valentine, as he checked his horse and
dismounted. "You had better let me go first, for it may happen that the
cave we are about to enter may have an occupier not at all disposed to
move for us, and it is as well to act prudently."

"What do you mean? To what occupier do you allude?"

"Hang it, I do not know," the Frenchman replied carelessly; "in any
case, it is as well to be on one's guard."

While saying this, Valentine produced from under his zarapé two
candlewood torches, which he lighted; he gave one to Don Pablo, and the
two men, after hobbling their horses, opened the bushes and advanced
boldly toward the cave. After walking a few steps, they suddenly found
themselves at the entrance of one of those magnificent natural grottos
formed by the volcanic convulsions so frequent in these parts.

"Attention!" Valentine muttered in a low voice to his comrade.

The sudden appearance of the two men startled a cloud of night birds and
bats, which flew away heavily in all directions, uttering shrill cries.
Valentine went on, not troubling himself about these funereal guests,
whose sports he so unexpectedly noticed. All at once, a hoarse and
prolonged growl came from a distant corner of the cave.

The two men stopped as if rooted to the ground. They found themselves
face to face with a magnificent black bear, whose usual residence this
cavern doubtless was, and which, standing on its hind legs with open
mouth, showed the troublesome persons who came to trouble it so
inopportunely in its lair, a tongue red as blood, and glistening claws
of a remarkable length. It balanced itself clumsily, according to the
fashion of its congeners, and its round and dazzled eyes were fixed on
the adventurers in a manner that would cause reflection. Fortunately,
they were not the men to let themselves be intimidated for long.

"Hum!" said Valentine, surveying the animal, "I was sure of it; there is
a young fellow who seems inclined to sup with us."

"My rifle, on the contrary, will make us sup with him," Don Pablo said
with a laugh.

"For Heaven's sake do not fire," the hunter said quickly, as he checked
the young man who had already shouldered his rifle; "a shot fired at
this spot will produce a fearful row: we do not know what sort of people
may be prowling around us; so we must not compromise ourselves."

"That is true," Don Pablo remarked; "but what is to be done?"

"That is my business," Valentine replied; "take my torch, and hold
yourself in readiness to help me."

Then, resting his rifle against the side of the cave, he went out, while
the Mexican remained alone, facing the bear, which, dazzled and
perplexed by the light, did not venture to stir. In a few minutes
Valentine returned; he had been to fetch his lasso, fastened to the
saddle bow.

"Now, stick your torches in the ground, to be ready for any accident."

Don Pablo obeyed; the hunter carefully prepared the lasso and whirled it
round his head, while whistling in a peculiar way.

At this unexpected appeal the bear moved heavily two or three paces
forward, but that was its ruin. The lasso started from the hunter's
hands, the slipknot fell on the animal's shoulders, and the two men
slipped back, tugging at it with all their strength. The poor quadruped,
thus strangled and stretching out a tongue a foot long, tottered and
fell, striving in vain to remove with its huge paws the unlucky collar
that compressed its throat. But the hunters were not conquered by their
enemy's tremendous efforts; they redoubled their strength, and did not
loose the lasso till the bear had given its last sigh.

"Now," said Valentine, after he had assured himself that Bruin was
really dead, "bring the horses in here, Don Pablo, while I cut off our
enemy's paws, to roast them in the ashes while we are talking."

When the young man re-entered the grotto, leading the horses, he found
Valentine, who had lighted a large fire, busied in flaying the bear,
whose paws were gently roasting in the embers, as he had said. Don Pablo
gave the horses their food, and then sat down before the fire near
Valentine.

"Well," said the latter with a smile, "do you fancy this a comfortable
place for a gossip?"

"Yes, it is," the young man carelessly replied, as he rolled between
his; fingers a husk cigarette with the dexterity apparently peculiar to
the Spanish race; "we are all right here: I am ready for your
explanation, my friend."

"I will give it you," the hunter said, who had finished skinning the
bear, and quietly returned his knife to his boot, after carefully wiping
the blade; "how long have you known Red Cedar's hiding place?"

At this point-blank question, which he was far from expecting, the young
man started; a feverish flush covered his face, and he did not know what
to answer.

"Why--?" he stammered.

"About a month, I think?" Valentine continued, not appearing to notice
his friend's confusion.

"Yes, about," the other replied, not knowing what he said.

"And for a month," Valentine continued, imperturbably, "you have left
your father's side each night to go and make love to the daughter of the
man who murdered your sister?"

"My friend," Don Pablo said, painfully.

"Would you assert that it is not true?" the hunter went on hastily, as
he bent on him a glance which made him look down: "explain yourself,
Pablo--I am waiting for your justification. I am curious to know how you
will manage to prove to me that you have acted rightly."

The young man, while his friend was speaking, had time to regain, at any
rate, a portion, if not all, of his coolness and presence of mind.

"You are severe," he said; "before accusing me, it would be, perhaps,
worthwhile to listen to the reasons I have to offer you."

"Stay, my friend." Valentine said, quickly, "let us not turn from the
question, but be frank; do not take the trouble to describe your love to
me, for I know it as well as you do--I saw it born and grow; still,
permit me to tell you certainly I thought that after the assassination
of Doña Clara, this love, which had hitherto resisted everything, would
die out. It is impossible to love those we despise. Red Cedar's daughter
can only appear to you through a blood-stained cloud."

"Don Valentine," the young man exclaimed, in grief, "would you render
that angel responsible for the crimes of a villain?"

"I will not discuss with you the famous theory which lays down that
faults and crimes are personal; faults may be so, but in desert life the
whole family must be responsible for the crimes of its chief; were it
not so, no security would be possible for honest people."

"Oh, how can you speak thus!"

"Very good--let us change the ground, as that is disagreeable to you.
You possess the noblest and most honourable nature of any man I know, Don
Pablo. I presume you never had a thought of making Ellen your mistress?"

"No!" the young man savagely protested.

"Would you make her your wife, then?" Valentine said, with a cutting
accent, as he looked him fixedly in the face.

Don Pablo bowed his head in despair.

"I am accursed!" he exclaimed.

"No," Valentine said, as he seized him sharply by the arm, "you are mad.
Like all young men, passion sways and overpowers you--you listen to that
alone; you despise the voice of reason, and hence commit faults which
may speedily become, in spite of yourself, crimes."

"Do not speak thus, my friend."

"You have only reached faults as yet," Valentine said, imperturbably;
"but take care."

"Oh, it is you who are mad, my friend, to say such things to me. Believe
me, however great my love for Ellen may be, I shall never forget the
duties imposed on me by the strange position in which fate has placed
me."

"And yet for a month you have known the hiding place of the most
implacable enemy of your family, and have kept it a profound secret, in
order to satisfy the claims of a passion which can only have a
disgraceful result for you! You see us vainly employing all the means in
our power to discover the traces of our enemy, and you betray us coldly,
deliberately, for the sake of a few love phrases which you find means
to exchange daily with a girl, while making us believe that, like
ourselves, you are engaged in fruitless researches. What name will you
give to your conduct save that of a traitor?"

"Valentine, you insult me, the friendship you have for me does not
authorise you to act thus; take care, for patience has its limits."

The hunter interrupted him by a coarse laugh.

"You see it, boy," he said sternly, "already you threaten me."

The young man rolled on the ground in despair.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I have suffered enough."

Valentine looked at him for a moment with tender pity, then bent over
him, and touching his shoulder:

"Listen to me, Don Pablo," he said in a gentle voice.




CHAPTER IV.

A BACKWARD GLANCE.


We will now take up our narrative at the point where we left it at the
conclusion of the "Pirates of the Prairies." During the six months which
had elapsed since the mournful death of Doña Clara, certain events have
taken place, which it is indispensable for the reader to know, in order
properly to understand the following story.

He will probably remember that White Gazelle was picked up in a fainting
condition by Bloodson, while at the side of the old pirate, Sandoval. He
threw the girl across his horse's neck, and started at full speed in the
direction of the teocali, which served him as a refuge and fortress. We
will follow these two important persons, whom we reproach ourselves with
having too long neglected.

Bloodson's mad course was frightful to look on. In the shadow of the
night the horse bounded forward, trampling beneath its nervous hoofs
everything they met, while its outstretched head cleft the air. Its ears
were thrown back, and from its widely opened nostrils issued jets of
steam which traced long white furrows in the gloom. It dashed forward,
uttering snorts of pain, and biting between its clenched teeth the
_bozal_ which it covered with foam, while its flanks, torn by the spurs
of its impatient rider, dripped with blood and perspiration. But the
faster it went, the more did Bloodson torment it, and seek to increase
its speed.

The trees and rocks disappeared with marvellous rapidity on either side
the road, and White Gazelle was presently restored to life by the
violent shocks the movements of the horse gave to her body. Her long
hair trailed in the dust, her eyes, raised to Heaven, were bathed in
tears of despair, grief, and impotence. At the risking of fracturing her
skull against the stones, she made useless efforts to escape from the
arms of her ravisher, but the latter fixed on her a glance whose passion
revealed a ferocious joy, and did not appear to notice the terror he
caused the girl, or rather seemed to derive from it an unspeakable
pleasure. His compressed lips remained silent, only allowing passage at
intervals to a shrill whistle intended to increase the ardour of his
horse, which, exasperated by the pressure of its rider, seemed no longer
to touch the ground, and devoured the space like the fantastic steed in
the ballad of Lenore.

The girl uttered a cry, but it was lost in the gloomy echoes, drowned in
the sound of this mad chase. And the horse still galloped on. Suddenly
White Gazelle collected all her strength, and bounded forward with such
vivacity, that her feet already touched the ground; but Bloodson was on
his guard, and ere she had regained her balance, he stooped down without
checking his steed, and seizing the girl by her long tresses, lifted her
up, and placed her again before him. A sob burst from the Gazelle's
chest, and she fainted once again.

"Ah, you shall not escape me," Bloodson yelled; "no one in the world can
tear you from my grasp."

In the meanwhile darkness had been succeeded by day; the sun rose in
all its splendour. Myriads of birds saluted the return of light by their
joyous strains; nature had awakened gaily, and the sky, of a diaphanous
azure, promised one of those lovely days, which the blessed climate of
these countries has alone the privilege of offering.

A fertile landscape, exquisitely diversified, stretched out on either
side the road, and blended with the distant horizon. The girl's body
hung down the side of the horse, following unresistingly all the
movements imparted to it; with her face covered with a livid paleness,
half opened lips, clenched teeth, uncovered bosom and panting chest, she
palpitated under Bloodson's hand, which pressed heavily upon her.

At length, they reached a cavern, where were encamped some forty
Indians, armed for war; these were Bloodson's companions. He made them a
sign, and a horse was brought to him; it was high time, for the one he
rode had scarce stopped ere it fell, pouring forth black blood from its
nostrils, mouth, and ears. Bloodson mounted, took the girl before him,
and started again.

"To the hacienda Quemada (the burnt farm)," he shouted.

The Indians, who doubtless were only awaiting their chief's arrival,
followed his example, and soon the whole band, with the stranger at
their head, galloped along, hidden by the dense cloud of dust they
raised. After five hours' ride, whose speed surpasses all description,
the Indians saw the tall steeples of a town standing out in the azure of
the horizon, beneath a mass of smoke and vapour. Bloodson and his band
had left the Far West.

The Indians turned slightly to the left, galloping across fields, and
trampling under their horses' hoofs, with wicked fury, the rich crops
that covered them. At the expiration of about half an hour, they reached
the base of a lofty hill, which rose solitary in the plain.

"Wait for me here," said Bloodson, as he checked his horse; "whatever
happens, do not stir till my return."

The Indians bowed in obedience, and Bloodson, burying his spurs in his
horse's flanks, started again at full speed. But this ride was not long.
When Bloodson had disappeared from his comrades' sight, he stopped his
horse and dismounted. After removing the bridle, to let the animal
browze freely on the thick and tall grass of the plain, the stranger
raised in his arms the girl whom he had laid on the ground, where she
remained senseless, and began slowly scaling the hillside.

It was the hour when the birds salute with their parting strains the
sun, whose disc, already beneath the horizon, shed around only oblique
and torpid beams. The shadow was rapidly invading the sky; the wind was
rising with momentarily increasing violence, the heat was oppressive,
large blackish clouds, fringed with grey and borne by the breeze, chased
heavily athwart the sky, drawing nearer and nearer to the earth. In a
word, all foreboded one of those hurricanes such as are only seen in
these countries, and which make the most intrepid men turn pale with
terror.

Bloodson still ascended, bearing the girl in his arms, whose lifeless
head hung over his shoulder. Drops of lukewarm rain, large as dollars,
had begun to fall at intervals, and spotted the earth, which immediately
drank them up; a sharp and penetrating odour exhaled from the ground and
impregnated the atmosphere.

But Bloodson still went up with the same firm step, his head drooping
and eyebrows contracted. At length he reached the top of the hill, when
he stopped and bent a searching glance around. At this moment, a
dazzling flash shot athwart the sky, illuminating the landscape with a
bluish tint, and the thunder burst forth furiously.

"Oh!" Bloodson muttered with a sinister accent, and as if answering
aloud an internal thought, "nature is harmonising with the scene about
to take place here; but the storm of the Heavens is not so terrible as
the one growling in my heart. Come, come! I only needed this fearful
melody. I am the avenger, and am about to accomplish the demoniacal task
which I imposed on myself; during a night of delirium."

After uttering these ill-omened words, he continued his progress,
proceeding toward a pile of half-calcined stones, whose black points
stood out of the tall grass a short distance off. The top of the hill
where Bloodson was, offered a scene of inexpressible savageness. Through
the tufts of grass might be noticed ruins blackened by fire, pieces of
wall, and vaults half broken in. Here and there were fruit trees,
dahlias, cedars, and a _noria_ or well, whose long pole still bore at
one end the remains of the leathern bucket once employed to draw water.

In the centre of the ruins stood a large wooden cross, marking the site
of a tomb; at the foot of this cross were piled up, with ghastly
symmetry, some twenty grinning skulls, to which the rain, wind, and sun
had given the lustre and yellowish tinge of ivory. Round the tomb,
snakes and lizards, those guests of sepulchres, silently glided through
the grass, watching with their round and startled eyes the stranger who
dared to disturb their solitude. Not far from the tomb, a species of
shed, made of interlaced reeds, was falling to ruin, but still offered a
scanty shelter to travellers surprised by a storm. It was toward this
shed that Bloodson proceeded.

In a few minutes he reached it, and was thus sheltered from the rain,
which at this moment fell in torrents. The storm had reached the height
of its fury--the flashes succeeded each other uninterruptedly; the
thunder rolled furiously, and the wind violently lashed the trees. It
was, in a word, one of those awful nights on which deeds without a name,
which the sun will not illumine with its brilliant beams, are
accomplished.

Bloodson laid the girl on a pile of dry leaves in one of the corners of
the shed, and after gazing on her attentively for some seconds, he
folded his arms on his chest, frowned, and began walking up and down,
muttering unconnected sentences. Each time he passed before the maiden,
he stopped, bent on her a glance of undefinable meaning, and resumed his
walk with a shake of his head.

"Come," he said hoarsely, "I must finish it! What! That girl, so strong
and robust, lies there, pale, worn out, half dead. Why is it not Red
Cedar that I hold thus beneath my heel?--but patience, his turn will
come, and then!"

A sardonic smile played round his lips, and he bent over the girl. He
gently raised her head, and was about to make her smell a bottle he had
taken from her girdle, when he suddenly let her fall on her bed of
leaves, and rushed away, uttering a cry of terror.

"No," he said, "it is not possible: I am mistaken, it is an illusion, a
dream."

After a moments' hesitation, he returned to the girl, and bent over her
again. But this time his manner had completely changed: though he had
been rough and brutal previously, he was now full of attention to her.
During the various events to which White Gazelle had been the victim,
some of the diamond buttons which fastened her vest had been torn off,
and exposed her bosom. Bloodson had noticed a black velvet scapulary, on
which two interlaced letters were embroidered in silver, suspended round
her neck by a thin gold chain. It was the sight of this mysterious
cypher which caused Bloodson the violent emotion from which he was now
suffering.

He seized the scapulary with a hand trembling with impatience, broke the
chain, and waited till a flash enabled him to see the cypher a second
time, and assure himself that he was not deceived. He had not long to
wait: within a few seconds a dazzling flash illumined the hill. Bloodson
looked, and was convinced: the cypher was really the one he fancied he
had seen. He fell to the ground, buried his head in his hands, and
reflected profoundly. Half an hour passed ere this man emerged from his
statue-like immobility; when he raised his head, tears were coursing
down his bronzed cheeks.

"Oh! this doubt is frightful!" he exclaimed; "at all risks I will remove
it: I must know what I have to hope."

And drawing himself up haughtily to his full height, he walked with a
firm and steady step toward the girl, who still lay motionless. Then,
as we saw him once before with Shaw, he employed the same method which
had been so successful with the young man, in order to recall White
Gazelle to life. But the poor girl had been subjected to such rude
trials during the last two days, that she was quite exhausted. In spite
of Bloodson's eager care, she still retained her terrible corpse-like
rigidity: all remedies were powerless. The stranger was in despair at
the unsatisfactory results of his attempts to recall the girl to life.

"Oh!" he exclaimed at each instant, "She cannot be dead: Heaven will not
permit it."

And he began again employing the measures whose futility had been proved
to him. All at once he smote his forehead violently.

"I must be mad," he exclaimed.

And searching in his pocket, he drew from it a crystal flask, filled
with a blood-red liquor; he opened with his dagger the girl's teeth, and
let two drops of the fluid fall into her mouth. The effect was
instantaneous: White Gazelle's features relaxed, a pinky hue covered her
face; she faintly opened her eyes, and murmured in a weak voice--

"Good Heaven! Where am I?"

"She is saved!" Bloodson exclaimed with a sigh of joy, as he wiped away
the perspiration that ran down his forehead. In the meanwhile the storm
had attained its utmost fury; the wind furiously shook the wretched
shed, the rain fell in torrents, and the thunder burst forth with a
terrible din.

"A fine night for a recognition!" Bloodson muttered.




CHAPTER V.

THE HACIENDA QUEMADA.


It was a strange group formed by this charming creature and this rough
wood ranger, at the top of this devastated hill, troubled by the
thunder, and illumined by the coruscating lightning.

White Gazelle had fallen back again, pale and inanimate. Bloodson gazed
out into the night, and reassured by the silence, bent a second time
over the girl. Pallid as an exquisite lily laid prostrate by the
tempest, the poor child seemed scarce to breathe. Bloodson raised her in
his nervous arms, and bore her to a piece of broken wall, at the foot of
which he laid his zarapé, and placed her on this softer couch. The
girl's head hung senseless on his shoulder. Then he gazed at her for a
long time: grief and pity were painted on Bloodson's face.

He, whose life had hitherto been but one long tragedy, who had no belief
in his heart, who was ignorant of softer feelings and sweet sympathies;
he, the avenger and slayer of the Indians, was affected, and felt
something new stirring within him. Tears ran down his cheeks.

"Oh, my God!" he exclaimed anxiously, "Can she be dead? Yes," he added,
"I was cowardly and cruel toward this poor creature, and God punishes
me."

The name, which he only used to blaspheme, he now pronounced almost with
respect; it was a species of prayer, a cry from his heart. This
indomitable man was at length conquered, he believed.

"How to help her?" he asked himself.

The rain that continued to fall in torrents, and inundated the girl, at
length recalled her to life; she partly opened her eyes, and muttered
softly:

"Where am I? What has happened? Oh, I fancied I was dying."

"She speaks, she lives, she is saved," Bloodson exclaimed.

"Who is that?" she asked, as she raised herself with difficulty.

At the sight of the hunter's bronzed face, she was frightened, closed
her eyes again, and fell back. She was beginning to remember.

"Take courage, my child," Bloodson said softening his rough voice, "I am
your friend."

"You my friend!" she exclaimed, "what means that word on your lips?"

"Oh, pardon me, I was mad, I knew not what I did."

"Pardon you, why? Am I not born to sorrow?"

"What must she have endured?" Bloodson muttered.

"Oh, yes," she continued, speaking as in a dream. "I have suffered
greatly. My life, though I am still very young, has, up to the present,
been one long suffering; still, I can remember having been happy
once--long, long ago. But the worst pain in this world is the
remembrance of happiness in misfortune."

A sigh escaped from her overladen chest, she let her head fall in her
hands, and wept. Bloodson listened to and gazed on her; this voice,
these features, all he saw and heard augmented the suspicions in his
heart, and gradually converted them into certainty.

"Oh, speak--speak again!" he continued, tenderly; "What do you remember
of your youthful years?"

The girl looked at him, and a bitter smile curled her lips.

"Why, in misery, think of past joys?" she said, shaking her head
mournfully; "Why should I tell you of these things--you, above all, who
are my direst enemy? Do you wish to inflict fresh tortures on me?"

"Oh!" he said, with horror, "Can you have such thoughts? Alas! I have
been very guilty toward you, I allow it, but pardon me--pardon me, I
conjure you! I would lay down my life to spare you any pain."

White Gazelle regarded with amazement, mingled with terror, this rough
man, almost prostrate before her, and whose face was bathed in tears.
She did not understand his remarks after the way in which he had
hitherto acted towards her.

"Alas!" she murmured, "My life is that of all unfortunate beings: there
was a time when, like other children, I had the songs of birds to lull
me to sleep, and flowers that smiled on me when I awoke; I had, too, a
sister who shared in my sports, and a mother, who loved and embraced me.
All that has fled forever."

Bloodson put up two poles, on which he suspended skins to shelter the
girl from the storm, which was gradually clearing off. She watched him
as he did so.

"I do not know," she said, sadly, "why I feel a necessity to tell you
all this, when you have done me so much harm; whence comes the feeling
which the sight of you produces in me? I ought to hate you."

She did not complete the sentence, but hid her face in her hands,
sobbing violently.

"It is Heaven which permits it to be so, poor child," Bloodson replied,
as he raised his eyes upward, and fervently made the sign of the cross.

"Perhaps so," she said, softly; "well, listen; whatever may happen, I
wish to relieve my heart. One day I was playing on my mother's knees,
my father was near us with my sister; all at once a terrible yell was
heard at the gate of our hacienda; the Apache Indians were attacking us.
My father was a resolute man, he seized his weapons, and rushed to the
walls. What happened then? I cannot tell you. I was hardly four years of
age at this time, and the terrible scene I witnessed is enveloped within
my mind in a blood-stained cloud. I can only remember how my mother, who
wept as she embraced us both, suddenly fell upon us, covering us with
blood; in vain did I try to recall her to life by my caresses--she was
dead."

There was a silence. Bloodson listened eagerly to this story with pallid
face, frowning brow, convulsively pressing the barrel of his rifle, and
wiping away at intervals the perspiration that poured down his face.

"Go on, child," he muttered.

"I remember nothing further; men resembling demons rushed into the
hacienda, seized my sister and myself, and set out at the full speed of
their horses. Alas, since that period I have never again seen my
mother's sweet face, or my father's kindly smile; henceforth I was alone
among the bandits who carried me off."

"But your sister, girl, your sister, what became of her?"

"I do not know; a violent quarrel broke out among our ravishers, and
blood was shed. After this quarrel they separated. My sister was taken
in one direction, I in another; I never, saw her again."

Bloodson seemed to make an effort over himself, then fixing his
tear-laden eyes on her, he exclaimed, fervently--

"Mercedés! Mercedés! it is really you? Do I find, you again after so
many years?"

White Gazelle raised her head quickly.

"Mercedés," she repeated, "that is the name my mother gave me."

"It is I, I, Stefano, your uncle! your father's brother!" Bloodson said,
as he pressed her, almost mad with joy, to his breast.

"Stefano! My uncle! Yes, yes, I remember--I know."

She fell lifeless in Bloodson's arms.

"Wretch that I am, I have killed her--Mercedés, my beloved child, come
to yourself!"

The girl opened her eyes again, and threw herself on Bloodson's neck,
weeping with joy.

"Oh, my uncle! My uncle! I have a family at last, then. Thank God!" The
hunter's face became grave.

"You are right, child," he said, "thank God, for it is He who has done
everything, and who decreed that I should find you again on the tomb of
those whom we have both been lamenting for so many years."

"What do you mean, uncle?" she asked, in surprise.

"Follow me, girl," the wood ranger replied; "follow me, and you shall
know."

The girl rose with difficulty, leant on his arm, and followed him. By
the accent of Don Stefano's voice, Mercedés understood that her uncle
had an important revelation to make her. They found some difficulty in
walking through the ruins, obstructed with grass and creepers, but at
length reached the cross, where Bloodson stopped.

"On your knees, Mercedés," he said in a mournful voice; "on this spot
your father and mother were buried by me fifteen years ago, on such a
night as this."

The girl fell on her knees without replying, and Don Stefano imitated
her. Both prayed for a long time with tears and sobs, and then they rose
again. Bloodson made his niece a sign to sit down at the foot of the
cross, placed himself by her, an after passing his hand over his
forehead as if to collect his thoughts, he spoke in a dull voice, with
an accent which, in spite of all his resolution, sorrow caused to
tremble.

"Listen to me, child," he said, "for what you are about to hear will
perhaps help us to find the murderers of your parents, if they still
live."

"Speak, uncle," she said in a firm voice; "yes, you are right: Heaven
willed it that our meeting should take place thus. Be assured that the
murderers will not be suffered to go much longer unpunished."

"So be it," said Don Stefano; "for fifteen years I have been awaiting
the hour of vengeance. Heaven will sustain me, I hope, till the moment
when it strikes. Your father and I resided at the spot where we now are.
This hill was occupied by a vast hacienda, which we built; the
surrounding fields belonging to us, and were cleared by two hundred
persons in our pay. Heaven blessed our labour, which prospered; everybody
loved and respected us around, for our abode was always open to those
whom misfortune struck. But if our countrymen esteemed us and applauded
our efforts, the owners of an adjoining hacienda had vowed us an
implacable hatred. For what reason? That I never succeeded in
discovering. Was it jealousy or base envy? In any case these men hated
us. There were three of them, and they did not belong to the Spanish
race; they were North Americans, or, at any rate, I can for certainty
say one of them, of the name of Wilkes, was so. Still, although the
hatred that kept us apart was fierce, it was dull, and nothing led to
the supposition that it would ever burst into life. About this time,
important business compelled me to take a journey of several days. Your
father, poor child, and myself, could not separate, for a secret
presentiment seemed to warn us. When I returned, the hacienda was
utterly destroyed, and only a few pieces of the walls still smoked. My
brother and our whole family, as well as the servants, had been
murdered."

Bloodson stopped.

"Terminate this sad story, uncle," the girl said, hastily, "I must know
all, in order to take my share of the vengeance."

"That is true," Don Stefano replied; "but I have little more to say, and
will be brief; during a whole night I traversed these smoky ruins,
seeking the corpses of those I loved; and when, after infinite
difficulty, I succeeded in finding them, I interred them piously, and
took an oath to avenge them over their tomb. This oath I have
religiously kept during fifteen years; unhappily, though I have punished
many culprits, up to the present the leaders have escaped me by some
extraordinary fatality. Your father, whom I found dying, expired in my
arms ere he was able to tell me his assassins; and though I have strong
grounds for accusing Wilkes and his companions, no proof has yet
corroborated my suspicions, and the names of the villains are unknown to
me. It was only the day before yesterday, when the scoundrel Sandoval
fell, that I fancied I had discovered one of them at last."

"You were not mistaken, uncle; that man was really one of our
ravishers," Mercedés replied, in a firm voice.

"And the others?" Don Stefano quickly asked.

"I know them, uncle."

At this revelation, Don Stefano uttered a cry that resembled the howl of
a wild beast.

"At last!" he exclaimed, with such an outburst of fury, that the girl
was almost terrified.

"And now, dear uncle," she went on, "permit me to ask you one question,
after which I will answer yours, if you have any to ask."

"Speak, child."

"Why did you seize me and bring me here?"

"Because I fancied you the daughter of that Sandoval, and wished to
immolate you on the tomb of his victims," Bloodson answered, in a
trembling voice.

"Did you not hear, then, what the man said to me?"

"No; seeing you bent over him, I thought you were watching him die. Your
fainting fit, which I attributed to sorrow, only augmented my certainty;
that is why I rushed on you so soon as I saw you fall."

"But the letter you took from me would have revealed all to you."

"Do you think, then, child, I took the trouble to read it? No, I only
recognised you by the scapulary hung round your neck."

"The finger of God is in all this," the girl said, with an accent of
conviction; "it was really He who directed it all."

"Now it is your turn, Mercedés tell me who the assassins are."

"Give me the letter first, uncle."

"Here it is," he said, handing it to her.

The girl snatched it and tore it into the minutest fragments. Bloodson
saw her do it without understanding her motive; when the last piece of
paper was borne away by the breeze, the girl turned to her uncle.

"You wish to know the names of the assassins of my father, you say,
uncle?"

"Yes."

"You are determined that the vengeance you have been pursuing so long
shall not escape you, now that you are on the point of obtaining it, and
you wish to carry out your oath to the end?"

"Yes; but why all these questions?" he asked, impatiently.

"I will tell you, uncle," she replied, as she drew herself up with
strange resolution; "I, too, have also taken an oath, and do not wish to
break it."

"What is its nature?"

"To avenge my father and mother, but to accomplish it I must be free to
act as I think proper, and hence I will not reveal those means to you
till the time arrives; today I cannot do it."

Such resolution flashed in the girl's jet-black eye, that Bloodson did
not attempt to induce her to do what he desired; he understood that any
pressing on his part would be useless.

"Very good," he answered, "be it so; but you swore to me--"

"That you shall know all when the moment arrives," she said, as she
stretched out her right hand to the cross.

"Your word is enough; but may I at least know what you intend doing?"

"Up to a certain point you may."

"Go on."

"You have a horse?"

"At the foot of the hill."

"Bring it to me, uncle, and let me start; before all, let no one know
the ties that unite us."

"I will be dumb."

"If ever you see or hear anything connected with me, believe nothing,
feel surprised at nothing; say to yourself that I am acting on behalf of
our common vengeance, for that alone will be true."

Don Stefano shook his head, and said:

"You are very young, child, for so rude a task."

"Heaven will help me, uncle," she replied, with a flashing glance; "the
task is just and holy, for I desire to punish my father's assassins."

"Well," he continued, "your will be done: as you have said, it is a holy
task, and I have no right to prevent you accomplishing it."

"Thanks, uncle," the girl said, feelingly; "and now, while I pray at my
father's tomb, do you fetch me your horse, that I may set out without
delay."

Bloodson retired without answering, and the girl fell on her knees at
the foot of the cross. Half an hour later, after tenderly embracing Don
Stefano, she mounted the horse, and started at a gallop in the direction
of the Far West. Bloodson followed her as long as it was possible for
him to see her in the darkness, and, when she had disappeared, he fell
on the tomb on his knees, muttering in a hollow voice:

"Will she succeed? Who knows?" he added with an accent impossible to
describe.

He prayed till day, but with the first beams of the sun he joined his
comrades, and returned with them to the Far West.




CHAPTER VI.

THE APACHES.


At the shot fired by Pedro Sandoval, after the fashion, of a peroration
to his too lengthened story, as we have seen, the Apaches, who had
hitherto kept out of earshot, ran up at full speed. Red Cedar hurried in
pursuit of Bloodson, but uselessly; he could not catch up to him, and
was compelled to rejoin his comrades. The latter were already making
preparations to bury the old pirate, whose body they could not leave to
be devoured by the wild beasts and birds of prey. Sandoval was a great
favourite of the Apaches, with whom he had lived a long time, and they
had on many occasions, been able to appreciate his courage and marauding
talents.

Stanapat had assembled his band, and was at the head of a certain number
of resolute warriors, whom he divided into two parties, and then
approached Red Cedar.

"Will my brother listen to the words of a friend?" he said.

"My father can speak; although my heart is very sad, my ears are open,"
the squatter answered.

"Good," the chief continued; "my brother will take a party of my young
men, and put himself on the trail of the palefaces, while I pay the
white warrior the duties proper for him."

"Can I thus leave a friend, before his body is placed in the ground?"

"My brother knows what he ought to do, but the palefaces are rapidly
retiring."

"You are right, chief; I go, but I leave you my warriors--my comrades
will be sufficient for me. Where shall I find you again?"

"At Bloodson's teocali."

"Good; will my brother soon be there?"

"In two days."

"The second sun will find me with all my warriors by the side of the
sachem."

Stanapat bowed in reply: Red Cedar approached the corpse of Sandoval,
bent down, and seized his frigid hand.

"Farewell, brother," he said, "pardon me for not being present at your
funeral, but an important duty claims me; I am going to avenge you.
Farewell, my old comrade, rest in peace, your enemies will not live many
days--farewell!"

After this funeral oration, the squatter gave his comrades a signal,
bowed once again to Stanapat, and started at a gallop, followed by the
other pirates. When their allies were out of sight, the Apaches began
the funeral ceremony, which had been interrupted by the conversation
between their chief and the pirate. Stanapat ordered the corpse to be
washed, the face painted of various colours, while the other Indians
surrounded it, bewailing. Some, whose grief was more powerful or
exaggerated, made incisions in their arms, or chopped off a joint of one
of the left hand fingers, in sign of morning. When all was ready, the
sachem placed himself by the head of the corpse, and addressing the
company, said:

"Why do you weep? Why do you lament? See, I do not weep; I, his oldest
and most devoted friend. He has gone to the other land, the Wacondah has
recalled him; but if we cannot bring him back among us, our duty is to
avenge him. The palefaces have lulled him, we will kill as many
palefaces as we can, in order that they may accompany him, and wait on
him, and that he may enter the presence of the Wacondah as a great
warrior should appear. Death to the palefaces!"

"Death to the palefaces!" the Indians shouted, brandishing their
weapons.

The chief turned his head away, and a smile of contempt curled his thin
lips at this enthusiastic explosion. But this, smile lasted no longer
than a lightning flash. Reassuming at once, the Indian stoicism,
Stanapat, with all the decorum customary on such occasions, clothed the
body in the richest robes to be found, and the handsomest blankets. The
corpse was then placed in a sitting posture, in the grave dug for it,
whose bottom and sides had been lined with wood; a whip, weapons, and
some other articles were added, then the earth was thrown in, and the
whole covered with heavy stones so that the coyotes could not pull out
the body. This duty accomplished, at a signal from their chief the
Apaches remounted their horses, and started at a gallop on the road
leading to Bloodson's teocali, thinking no more of the comrade from whom
they had separated for ever, than if he had never existed.

The Apaches marched for three days; at the evening of the fourth, after
a fatiguing day across the sands, they halted at about a league from the
Rio Gila, in a thick wood, where they hid themselves. So soon as the
encampment was formed, Stanapat sent off scouts in various directions,
to discover whether the other war parties of the allied nations were
near, and to try and discover at the same time Red Cedar's trail.

When the sentinels were posted, for several warlike tribes of the Far
West guard themselves with great care when on the war trail, Stanapat
visited all the posts, and prepared to listen to the reports of the
scouts, several of whom had already returned. The three first Indians
whom he questioned, announced but little of importance; they had
discovered nothing.

"Good," said the chief; "the night is dark, my young men have moles'
eyes; tomorrow, at sunrise, they will see more clearly; they can sleep
this night. At daybreak, they will start again, and perhaps discover
something."

He made a signal with his hand to dismiss the scouts, who bowed
respectfully to the chief, and retired in silence. Only one remained
impassive and motionless, as if the words had not been addressed to him
as well as to the others. Stanapat turned and looked at him for some
seconds.

"My son, the Swift Elk, did not hear me doubtless," he said; "he can
rejoin his comrades."

"The Elk heard his father," the Indian replied, coolly.

"Then why does he remain?"

"Because he has not told what he saw, and what he saw is important to
the chief."

"Wah!" said Stanapat, "And what has my son seen which his brothers did
not discover?"

"The warriors were seeking in another direction, that is why they did
not perceive the trail."

"And my son has found one?"

Swift Elk bowed his head in affirmation.

"I await my son's explanation," the chief went on.

"The palefaces are two bowshot lengths from my father's camp," the
Indian answered laconically.

"Oh! Oh!" the chief said doubtfully; "That seems to me too much."

"Will my father see?"

"I will see," Stanapat said as he rose.

"If my father will follow me, he will soon see."

"Let us go."

The two Indians started. Swift Elk led the sachem through the wood, and
on reaching the river bank, he showed him a short distance off a rock,
whose black outline rose silent and gloomy over the Gila.

"They are there," he said, stretching out his arm in the direction of
the rock.

"My son has seen them."

"I have seen them."

"That is the Rock of Mad Buffalo, if I am not mistaken."

"Yes," the Indian answered.

"The position will be difficult to carry," the sachem muttered, as he
carefully examined the rock.

This place was called the rock or hill of Mad Buffalo, which name it
indeed still bears, for the following reasons. The Comanches had, some
fifty years ago, a famous chief who rendered his tribe the most warlike
and redoubtable of all in the Far West. This chief, who was called the
Mad Buffalo, was not only a great warrior, but also a great politician.
By the aid of sundry poisons, but especially of arsenic, which he
purchased of the white traders for furs, he had succeeded, by killing
all those who opposed him, in inspiring all his subjects with an
unbounded superstitious terror. When he felt that death was at hand, and
understood that his last hour had arrived, he indicated the spot he had
selected for his sepulchre.

It was a pyramidal column of granite and sand about four hundred and
fifty feet in height. This pillar commands for a long distance the
course of the river which washes its base and which, after making
numberless windings in the plain, comes back close to it again. Mad
Buffalo ordered that his tomb should be erected on the top of this hill,
where he had been accustomed to go and sit. His last wishes were carried
out with that fidelity the Indians display in such matters. His body was
placed at the top of the hill, mounted on his finest steed, and over
both a mound was formed. A pole stuck in the tomb bore the banner of the
chief, and the numerous scalps which he had raised from his enemies in
action.

Hence the mountain of Mad Buffalo is an object of veneration for the
Indians, and when a redskin is going to follow the war trail for the
first time, he strengthens his courage by gazing on the enchanted hill
which contains the skeleton of the Indian warrior and his steed.

The chief carefully examined the hill: it was, in truth, a formidable
position. The whites had rendered it even stronger, as far as was
possible, by cutting down the tallest trees they found, and forming
thick palisades lined with pointed stakes and defended by a ditch
eighteen feet in width. Thus protected, the hill had been converted into
a real impregnable fortress, unless regularly besieged.

Stanapat re-entered the wood, followed by his comrade, and went back to
the bivouac.

"Is the chief satisfied with his son?" the Indian tasked ere he retired.

"My son has the eyes of a tapir; nothing escapes him."

Swift Elk smiled proudly as he bowed.

"Does my son," the chief continued, in an insinuating voice, "know the
palefaces who are entrenched on the hill of Mad Buffalo?"

"Swift Elk knows them."

"Wah!" said the sachem; "my son is not mistaken; he has recognised the
trail?"

"Swift Elk is never mistaken," the Indian answered in a firm voice; "he
is a renowned warrior."

"My brother is right; he can speak."

"The pale chief who occupies the Rock of Mad Buffalo is the great white
hunter whom the Comanches have adopted, and who is called Koutonepi."

Stanapat could not check a movement of surprise.

"Wah!" he exclaimed; "Can it be possible? My son is positively sure that
Koutonepi is entrenched on the top of the hill?"

"Sure," the Indian said without hesitation.

The chief made Swift Elk a sign to retire, and, letting his head fall in
his hands, he reflected profoundly.

The Apache had seen correctly; Valentine and his comrades were really on
the rock. After the death of Doña Clara, the hunter and his friends
started in pursuit of Red Cedar, not waiting, in their thirst for
vengeance, till the earthquake was quite ended, and nature had resumed
its ordinary course. Valentine, with that experience of the desert which
he possessed so thoroughly, had, on the previous evening, discovered an
Apache trail; and, not caring to fight them in the open, owing to the
numerical weakness of his party, had scaled the hill, resolved to defend
himself against any who dared to attack him in his impregnable retreat.

In one of his numerous journeys across the desert, Valentine had noticed
this rock, whose position was so strong that it was easy to hold it
against an enemy of even considerable force, and he determined to take
advantage of this spot if circumstances compelled him at any time to
seek a formidable shelter.

Without loss of time the hunters fortified themselves. So soon as the
entrenchments were completed, Valentine mounted on the top of Mad
Buffalo's tomb, and looked attentively out on the plain. It was then
about midday: from the elevation where Valentine was, he surveyed an
immense extent of country. The prairie and the river were deserted:
nothing appeared on the horizon except here and there a few herds of
buffaloes, some nibbling the thick grass, others carelessly reclining.

The hunter experienced a feeling of relief and indescribable joy on
fancying that his trail was lost by the Apaches, and that he had time to
make all preparations for a vigorous defence. He first occupied himself
with stocking the camp with provisions, not to be overcome by famine if
he were, as he supposed, soon attacked. His comrades and himself,
therefore, had a grand buffalo hunt: as they killed them, their flesh
was cut in very thin strips, which were stretched on cords to dry in the
sun, and make what is called in the pampas _charqué_. The kitchen was
placed in a natural grotto, which was in the interior of the
entrenchments. It was easy to make a fire there with no fear of
discovery, for the smoke disappeared through an infinite number of
fissures, which rendered it imperceptible. The hunters spent the night
in making water bottles with buffalo hides: they rubbed fat into the
seams to prevent them leaking, and they had time to lay in a
considerable stock of water. At sunrise Valentine returned to his
look-out, and took a long glance over the plain to assure himself that
the desert remained calm and silent.

"Why have you made us perch on this rock like squirrels?" General Ibañez
suddenly asked him.

Valentine stretched out his arm.

"Look," he said; "what do you see down there?"

"Not much; a little dust, I fancy," the general said cautiously.

"Ah!" Valentine continued, "Very good, my friend. And do you know what
causes that dust?"

"I really do not."

"Well, I will tell you; it is the Apaches."

"_Caramba_, you are not mistaken?"

"You will soon see."

"Soon!" the general objected; "Do you think they are coming in this
direction?"

"They will be here at sunset."

"Hum! You did well in taking your precautions, well, comrade. _Cuerpo de
Cristo!_ we shall have our work cut out with all these red demons."

"That is probable," Valentine said with a smile.

And he descended from the top of the tomb where he had hitherto been
standing.

As the reader has already learned, Valentine was not mistaken. The
Apaches had really arrived on that night at a short distance from the
hill, and the scout found the trail of the whites. According to all
probability, a terrible collision was imminent between them and the
redskins; those two races whom a mortal hatred divides, and who never
meet on the prairie without trying to destroy each other. Valentine
noticed the Apache scout when he came to reconnoitre the hill; he then
went down to the general, and said with that tone of mockery habitual to
him--

"Well, my dear friend, do you still fancy I am mistaken?"

"I never said so," the general exclaimed quickly; "Heaven keep me from
it! Still, I frankly confess that I should have preferred your being
mistaken. As you see, I display no self-esteem; but what would you have?
I am like that, I would sooner fight ten of my countrymen than one of
these accursed Indians."

"Unfortunately," Valentine said with a smile, "at this moment you have
no choice, my friend."

"That is true, but do not be alarmed; however annoyed I may feel, I
shall do my duty as a soldier."

"Oh! Who doubts it, my dear general?"

"_Caspita_, nobody, I know: but no matter, you shall see."

"Well, good night; try to get a little rest, for I warn you that we
shall be attacked tomorrow at sunrise."

"On my word," said the general with a yawn that threatened to dislocate
his jaw, "I ask nothing better than to finish once for all with these
bandits."

An hour later, with the exception of Curumilla, who was sentry, the
hunters were asleep; the Indians, on their side, were doing the same
thing.




CHAPTER VII.

THE HILL OF THE MAD BUFFALO.


About an hour before sunrise, Stanapat aroused his warriors, and gave
them orders to march. The Apaches seized their weapons, formed in Indian
file, and at a signal from their chief, entered the chaparral that
separated them from the rock held by the white hunters. Although the
distance was only two leagues, the march of the Apaches lasted more than
an hour; but it was carried out with so much prudence, that the hunters,
despite the watch they kept up, in no way suspected that their enemies
were so near them. The Apaches halted at the foot of the rock, and
Stanapat ordered the camp to be formed at once.

The Indians, when they like, can draw up their lines very fairly. This
time, as they intended to carry on a regular siege, they neglected no
precautions. The hill was surrounded by a ditch three yards wide and
four deep, the earth of which, thrown up, formed a breastwork, behind
which the Apaches were perfectly sheltered, and could fire without
showing themselves. In the centre of the camp, two huts or _callis_ were
erected, one for the chiefs, the other intended for the council lodge.
Before the entrance of the latter, the totem or emblem of the tribe, and
the sacred calumet were hung up.

We will explain here what these two emblems are, which several writers
have mentioned, though not described, but which it is very important to
know, if a desire is felt to study Indian manners. The totem, or
_kukevium_, is the national standard, the distinctive mark of each
tribe. It is supposed to represent the patron animal of the tribe;
coyote, jaguar, buffalo, etc., each tribe having its own; in this
instance it was a white buffalo. The totem is a long staff, decorated
with feathers of various colours, which are fastened perpendicularly from
top to bottom. This standard is only carried by the principal chief of
the tribe.

The calumet is a pipe, whose tube is four, six, even ten feet long; the
latter is sometimes round, but more frequently flat. It is adorned with
painted animals, hair, porcupine quills, or birds of brilliant colours.
The bowl is usually of red or white marble; when the stone is of dark
colour, it is painted white before using. The calumet is sacred: it was
given to the Indians by the sun, and for that reason must never be
polluted by contact with the ground.

In bivouacs, it is suspended between two cross poles fixed in the earth.
The pipe bearer is regarded as heralds were formerly among ourselves:
his person is inviolable. He is generally a renowned warrior of the
tribe, whom a wound received in action has rendered incapable of further
fighting.

The sun rose at the moment when the Apaches completed their
entrenchments. The whites, in spite of their bravery, felt a shudder of
terror run over their bodies when they found themselves thus invested on
all sides. The more so, as by the dim light of breaking day they could
see on the distant horizon several bands of warriors advancing from
different points.

"Hum!" said Valentine, with a toss of his head, "It will be a sharp
fight."

"Do you consider our situation a bad one?" the general asked him.

"Detestable."

"_Canarios!_" said General Ibañez: "We are lost in that case."

"Yes," the hunter answered, "unless a miracle occur."

"_Caspita_, what you say is not at all reassuring, my good fellow. Then,
in your opinion, there is no hope?"

"Yes," Valentine answered, "one chance is left us."

"What is it?" the general asked quickly.

"That the man who is being hanged feels--the rope may break."

The general shrugged his shoulders.

"Reassure yourself," the hunter said, still in a sarcastic tone; "it
will not break, I warrant you."

"That is the fine consolation you offer me," the general said in a tone,
half of joke, half of annoyance.

"Hang it, what would you have? It is all I can offer you at this moment;
but," he added, suddenly changing his accent, "all this does not
prohibit our breakfasting, I suppose."

"On the contrary," the general answered, "for I declare I have a
ferocious appetite, which, I assure you, has not been the case for a
long time."

"To table, then," Valentine exclaimed with a laugh; "we have not a
moment to lose if we wish to breakfast in peace."

"Are you sure of the fact?"

"Never mind, what can't be cured must be endured; and so to breakfast
with what appetite you may."

The three men then proceeded to a leaf hut built up against Mad
Buffalo's tomb, and, as they had said, made a hearty breakfast; perhaps,
as the general asserted, it was because the sight of the Apaches had put
them in a good temper. In the meanwhile, Stanapat, who had already
formed his camp, hastened to send couriers in every direction, to have
news of his allies as speedy as possible. The latter soon appeared,
accompanied by the players of chichikouis and drummers. These warriors
were at least five hundred in number, all handsome and well built,
clothed in rich dresses, splendidly armed, and offering to prejudiced
eyes the most frightful sight imaginable. The chief who arrived with
this large party was Black Cat.

We will explain in a few words the arrival of this chief with his tribe
among the Apache brothers--an arrival which may seem extraordinary,
after the part he had played in the attack on the squatter's camp. Red
Cedar had been surprised by the hunters at midnight, and his camp was at
once fired by the assailants. The earthquake had so thoroughly
complicated the situation, that none of the gambusinos perceived Black
Cat's treachery, who, for his part, so soon as he had pointed out the
position of the gambusinos, confined himself to sending his warriors
ahead, while himself remaining with the rear guard, so as not to
compromise himself, and be able to play the part that suited him best at
the right moment. His trick was most perfectly successful; the
gambusinos, attacked on all sides simultaneously, had only dreamed of
defending themselves as well as they could, having no time to perceive
if deserters from their allies were in the ranks of their enemies. Hence
Black Cat was heartily welcomed by Stanapat, who was delighted at the
help that reached him.

During the course of the day other bands entered the camp in turn, so
that at sunset nearly fifteen hundred redskin warriors were collected at
the foot of the rock, and the hunters were completely invested. The
movements of the Indians soon made them comprehend that they did not
intend to retire till they had reduced them.

The Indians are the shortest-sighted men in the world; and at the end of
two days, as the state of things must be remedied, a grand buffalo hunt
was organised. At daybreak, thirty-five hunters, under the orders of
Black Cat, left the camp, crossed the wood, and entered the prairie.
After a rapid ride of two hours, they forded the Little Tortoise River,
on the banks of which they halted to let their horses breathe. During
this halt they lit a _bois de vache_ fire, at which they cooked their
breakfast, and then set out again. At midday they examined the plain
stretching out at their feet, from the top of a hill; they saw, at a
considerable distance, several small herds of buffalo, each consisting
of four or six male buffaloes, peaceably grazing.

The hunters cocked their guns, went down into the plain, and made a
regular charge against these clumsy animals, which can run, however,
very fast. Each soon started in pursuit of the buffalo nearest to him.

The buffaloes at times assume the offensive, and pursue in their turn
the hunters for twenty to five-and-twenty yards; but it is easy to avoid
them; so soon as they perceive the futility of pursuit, they fly in
their turn. The Indians and half-breeds are so accustomed to this chase
on horseback, that they rarely require more than one shot to kill a
buffalo. When they fire they do not shoulder the piece, but, on the
contrary, stretch out both arms to their full extent; so soon as they
are about ten paces from the animal, they fire in this position, then
reload with incredible speed, for they do not ram the ball home with
wadding, but let it fall directly on the powder to which it adheres, as
they have previously held it in their mouths, and fire again at once.

Through this uncommon speed, the Indians produced in a short time a
perfect massacre among the buffaloes; sixty-eight of these animals were
killed in less than two hours, Black Cat having brought down eleven as
his share. The buffaloes were cut up and loaded on horses brought for
the purpose, then the hunters returned gaily to camp, conversing about
all the singular or dramatic incidents of the hunt, with all the Indian
vivacity. Thanks to this expedition, the Apaches were provisioned for a
long time.

A short distance from the camp, the Indians perceived a rider coming
toward them at full speed. Black Cat ordered a halt, and waited; it was
evident that the person arriving thus could only be a friend, and any
doubts were speedily dispelled. The Apaches recognised White Gazelle. We
have said elsewhere that the Indians were much attached to this girl;
they received her very graciously, and led her to Black Cat, who
remained motionless till she joined him. The chief examined her for a
moment attentively.

"My daughter is welcome," he said; "does she ask hospitality of the
Apaches?"

"No, chief; I have come to join them against the palefaces, as I have
done before," she replied, boldly; "besides, you know it as well as I
do," she added.

"Good!" the chief continued; "we thank my daughter; her friends are
absent, but we expect to see within a few hours Red Cedar and the
Long-knives of the East."

A shade of dissatisfaction covered the girl's forehead; but she at once
recovered, and ranged her horse by the side of the chief's, saying
carelessly--

"Red Cedar can come when he likes--it does not concern me. Am I not a
friend of the Apaches?"

"That is true," the Indian said, with a bow; "will my sister set out?"

"Whenever you please, chief."

The hunters started again at a gallop; an hour later, they entered the
camp, where they were received with shouts of joy from the Apache
warriors. Black Cat ordered a calli to be prepared for the girl; then,
after visiting the sentries, and listening to the reports of the scouts,
he sat down near the tree, at the foot of which White Gazelle had thrown
herself, to reflect on the new duties imposed on her by the engagements
into which she had entered with Bloodson.

"My daughter is sad," the old chief said, as he lit his pipe by the aid
of a long wand, adorned with feathers, and painted of different colours;
for, with that superstition natural to some Indians, he felt persuaded
that if he once touched fire with his hands he would die on the spot.

"Yes," the girl answered, "my heart is gloomy; a cloud has spread over
my mind."

"My sister must console herself: he whom she has lost will be avenged."

"The palefaces are strong," she said, looking at him fixedly.

"Yes," the chief replied, "the whites have the strength of a grizzly
bear, but the Indians have the craft of the beaver; my sister can feel
reassured, her enemies will not escape her."

"Does my father know it?"

"Black Cat is one of the great sachems of his tribe, nothing is hidden
from him. At this moment all the pirates of the prairie, joined by the
half-breeds, are advancing to surround the rock which serves as a refuge
to the great pale warrior; tomorrow, perhaps, six thousand redskin
warriors will be here. My sister can, therefore, see that her vengeance
is assured; unless the palefaces fly through the air, or plunge into the
waters, which cannot happen--they are lost."

The young girl made no reply; not thinking of the chief, whose piercing
eye was fixed on her, she rose and began walking up and down in great
agitation.

"Oh Heavens!" she said in a low voice, "They are lost! Oh, why am I but
a woman, and can do nothing for them? How can they be saved?"

"What does my sister say? Has the Wacondah troubled her mind?" the chief
asked her, as he stood before her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

The Spaniard looked at him for a moment, then let her head fall in her
hands, muttering in a choking voice,--

"Oh, Heavens! I am mad."

Black Cat took a searching glance around, and then bent down to the
girl's ear.

"My sister must follow me," he said, in a firm and significant voice.

White Gazelle raised her head, and looked at him; the chief laid a
finger, on his lip, as if to recommend silence to her, and, turning his
back, entered the wood. The girl followed him anxiously, and they walked
on thus tor some minutes. At length they reached the top of a mound
denuded of trees, where the eye could survey all around. Black Cat
stopped and made the girl a sign to approach him.

"Here we can talk; let my sister speak; my ears are open."

"What can I say that my father does not know?" the girl replied,
suspiciously.

"My sister wishes to save the palefaces, is it not so?"

"Well, yes," she said, with exaltation; "for reasons I cannot tell you,
these men, who, a few days back, were hateful to me, have become dear to
me; today I would save them at the peril of my life."

"Yes," the old man said, as if speaking to himself, "women are so; like
the leaves the wind carries off, their mind changes its direction with
the slightest breath of passion."

"Now you know my secret," she continued boldly, "I do not care about
having discovered it to you; act as you think proper, but no longer
count on me."

"On the contrary," the Apache replied with his sardonic smile, "I count
on you more than ever."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Black Cat continued, after taking a searching glance around, and
letting his voice drop, "I wish to save them too."

"You?"

"I. Did not the pale chief enable me to escape the death that awaited me
in the Comanche village? Did he not share with me as a brother the
firewater of his gourd, to give me strength to sit my horse, and rejoin
the warriors Of my tribe? Black Cat is a great chief. Ingratitude is a
white vice; gratitude is a red virtue. Black Cat will save his brother."

"Thanks, chief," said the girl, as she pressed the old man's rough hands
in hers; "thanks for your kindness. But, alas, time is slipping away
rapidly, dawn will be here in a few hours, and perhaps we shall not
succeed."

"Black Cat is prudent," the chief replied, "my sister must listen; but,
in the first place, she may be glad to warn her friends that she is
watching over them."

White Gazelle smiled in response; the Indian whistled in a peculiar
fashion, and Sunbeam made her appearance.




CHAPTER VIII.

BLACK CAT AND UNICORN.


Black Cat had retained a profound gratitude to Valentine through the
generosity with which the latter had saved his life. The chief sought by
any means possible to pay the debt after the attack on the gambusino
camp, during which he had so vigorously supported the hunter. All the
time he was being carried down the swollen Gila in the buffalo hide
canoes, Black Cat reflected seriously on the events taking place in his
sight.

He knew, like all the Indian chiefs of the Far West, the causes of the
hatred that separated the whites; moreover, he had been on several
occasions enabled to appreciate the moral difference existing between
the American squatter and the French hunter. Besides, the question was
now settled in his mind; all his sympathies were attracted to Valentine.
Still, it would be as well that his help, to be useful, should be freely
accepted by his friends, so as to prevent any misunderstanding.

When the earth had regained its equilibrium, and all had returned to the
order laid down at the commencement of the universe, Black Cat gave a
signal, and the canoes ran a shore. The chief ordered his men to bivouac
where they were, and await him; then noticing a short distance off, a
herd of wild horses, he lassoed one, tamed it in a few minutes, leaped
on its back, and started at a gallop. At this moment the sun rose
splendidly on the horizon.

The Apache chief journeyed the whole day without stopping, except a few
moments to let his horse breathe, and at sunset he found himself a
bowshot from Unicorn's village. After remaining in thought for a few
minutes, the Indian appeared to make up his mind; he urged on his horse,
and boldly entered the village, which, however, was deserted. Black Cat
traversed it in every direction, finding at every step traces of the
fearful fight of which it had been the scene a few days previously; but
he did not see a soul, not even a dog.

When an Indian is following a trail, he is never discouraged, but goes
on until he finds it. Black Cat left the village at the opposite end,
looked about for a minute, and then started unhesitatingly straight
ahead. His admirable knowledge of the prairie had not deceived him; four
hours later he reached the skirt of the virgin forest, under whose green
arches we have seen Unicorn's Comanches disappear. Black Cat also
entered the forest by the same road as the village population had
followed, and within an hour saw the fires flashing through the trees.
The Apache stopped for a moment, looked around him, and then went on.

Though apparently alone Black Cat felt that he was watched; he knew that
since his first step in the forest, he was followed by invisible eyes.
As he had not come however, in any warlike intention, he did not in any
way attempt to conceal his trail. These tactics were comprehended by the
Comanche sentries, who let him pass without revealing their presence,
but still communicated the arrival of an Apache chief on their territory
to each other, so that Black Cat's coming was known at the village,
while he was still a long way from it.

The chief entered a large clearing, in the midst of which stood several
huts. Several chiefs were silently seated round a fire, burning in front
of a calli, which Black Cat recognised as the medicine lodge. Contrary
to the custom generally adopted in such cases, no one seemed to notice
the approach of the chief, or rose to do him honour, and give him
welcome. Black Cat understood that something extraordinary was occurring
in the village, and that he was about to witness a strange scene.

He was in no way affected by the cold reception accorded to him; he
dismounted, threw his bridle over his horse's neck, and, walking to the
fire, sat down opposite Unicorn, between two chiefs, who fell back to
make room for him. Then, drawing the calumet from his girdle, he filled
and lit it, and began smoking, after bowing to the company. The latter
replied by the same gesture, but did not interrupt the silence. At
length Unicorn took the calumet from his lips, and turned to Black Cat.

"My brother is a great warrior," he said; "he is welcome, his arrival is
a happy omen for my young men, at a moment when a terrible chief is
about to leave us, and proceed to the happy hunting grounds."

"The Master of Life protected me, in permitting me to arrive so
opportunely; who is the chief about to die?"

"The Panther is weary of life," Unicorn replied, in a mournful voice;
"he counts many winters, his tired arm can no longer fell the buffalo or
the elk, his clouded eye only distinguishes with difficulty the nearest
objects."

"The Panther is no longer useful to his brothers, but has become a
burden to them; he must die," Black Cat remarked, sententiously.

"That is what the chief himself thought; he has this day communicated
his intentions to the council assembled here round the fire, and I, his
son, have undertaken to open for him the gates of another world."

"Panther is a wise chief; what can a man do with life when he grows a
burden to others? The Wacondah has been kind to the redskins in giving
them the necessary discernment to get rid of the aged and weak, and send
them to another world, where they will be born again, and after this
short trial, hunt with all the vigor of youth."

"My brother has spoken well," Unicorn answered, with a bow.

At this moment a movement took place in the crowd assembled round the
sweating lodge, in which the old chief, was. The door opened, and
Panther appeared. He was an old man of majestic height--in opposition to
the majority of Indians, who retain for a long time the appearance of
youth--his hair and beard, which fell in disorder on his shoulders and
chest, were of a dazzling whiteness. On his face, whose features were
imprinted with unconquerable energy, could be seen all the marks of a
decrepitude which had attained its last limits. He was clothed in his
handsomest costume, and painted and armed for war.

So soon as he appeared in the doorway of the hut all the chiefs rose.
Unicorn walked up to him and respectfully offered his right arm, on
which he leant. The old man, supported by his son, tottered up to the
fire, before which he squatted. The other chiefs took their place by his
side, and the warriors formed a wide circle round them. The great
calumet of peace was brought in by the pipe bearer, who presented it to
the old man, and when it had gone round the circle, Panther took the
word. His voice was low and faint, but, owing to the deep silence that
prevailed, it was heard by all.

"My sons," he said, "I am about to depart for another country; I shall
soon be near the Master of Life. I will tell the warriors of our nation
whom I meet on the road that the Comanches are still invincible, and
their nation is the queen of the prairies."

A murmur of satisfaction, soon suppressed, however, greeted these words;
in a moment the old man continued--

"Continue to be brave as your ancestors; be implacable to the palefaces,
those devouring wolves, covered with an elk skin; let them ever assume
the feet of the antelope, to fly more speedily before you, and may they
never see the wolf tails you fasten to your heels. Never taste the
firewater, that poison, by the help of which the palefaces enervate us,
render us weak as women, and incapable of avenging insults. When you are
assembling round the war or hunting fire in your camp, think sometimes
of Panther, the chief, whose renown was formerly great, and who, seeing
that the Wacondah forgot him on earth, preferred to die sooner than be
longer a burthen to his nation. Tell the young warriors who tread the
path for the first time, the exploits of your chief, Bounding Panther,
who was so long the terror of the foes of the Comanches."

While uttering these words the old chief's eye had become animated, and
his voice trembled with emotion. The Indians assembled round him
listened to him respectfully.

"But what use is it to speak thus?" he went on, suppressing a sigh; "I
know that my memory will not die out among you, for my son Unicorn is
here to succeed me, and guide you in his turn on the path where I so
long led you. Bring my last meal, so that we may soon strike up 'the
song of the Great Remedy.'"

Immediately the Indians brought up pots filled with boiled dog's flesh,
and at a sign from Panther, the meal commenced. When it was ended the
old man lit his calumet, and smoked, while the warriors danced round
him, with Unicorn at their head. Presently the old man made a sign, and
the warriors stopped.

"What does my father desire?" Unicorn asked.

"I wish you to sing the song of the Great Remedy."

"Good," Unicorn replied, "my father shall be obeyed."

Then he struck up that strange chant, of which the following is a
translation, the Indians joining in chorus and continuing to dance:

"Master of Life, thou givest us courage! It is true that redskins know
that thou lovest them. We send thee our father this day. See how old and
decrepit he is! The Bounding Panther has been changed into a clumsy
bear! Grant that he may find himself young in another world, and able
to, hunt as in former times."

And the round danced on, the old man smoking his pipe stoically the
while. At length, when the calumet was empty, he shook out the ashes on
his thumbnail, laid the pipe before him, and looked up to heaven. At
this moment the first signs of twilight tinged the extreme line of the
horizon with an opaline hue, the old man drew himself up, his eye became
animated, and flashed.

"The hour has come," he said, in a loud and firm voice; "the Wacondah,
summons me. Farewell, Comanche warriors; my son, you have to send me to
the Master of Life."

Unicorn drew out the tomahawk hanging from his belt, brandished it over
his head, and without hesitation, and with a movement swift as thought,
cleft the skull of the old man, whose smiling face was turned to him,
and who fell without a sigh.

He was dead!

The dance began again more rapid and irregularly, and the warriors
shouted in chorus:

"Wacondah! Wacondah! Receive this warrior! See, he did not fear death!
He knew there was no such thing, as he was to be born again in thy
bosom!

"Wacondah! Wacondah! Receive this warrior. He was just! The blood
flowed red and pure in his heart! The words his chest uttered were wise!

"Wacondah! Wacondah! Receive this warrior! He was the greatest and most
celebrated of thy Comanche children!

"Wacondah! Wacondah! Receive this warrior. See how many scalps he wears
at his girdle.

"Wacondah! Wacondah! Receive this warrior!"

The song and dancing lasted till daybreak, when, at a signal from
Unicorn, they ceased.

"Our father has gone," he said; "his soul has left his body, which it
inhabited too long, to choose another abode. Let us give him a burial
suited to so great a warrior."

The preparations were not lengthy; the body of the Bounding Panther was
carefully washed, then interred in a sitting posture, with his war
weapons; the last horse he had ridden and his dogs were placed by his
side, after having their throats cut; and then a bark hut was erected
over the tomb to preserve it from the profanation of wild beasts; on the
top of the hut a pole was planted, surmounted by the scalps the old
warrior had taken at a period when he, still young and full of strength,
led the Comanches in action.

Black Cat witnessed all the affecting incidents of this mournful tragedy
respectfully, and with religious devotion. When the funeral rites were
ended, Unicorn came up to him.

"I thank my brother," the Comanche said, "for having helped us to pay
the last duties to an illustrious warrior. Now I am quite at my
brother's service, he can speak without fear; the ears of a friend are
open, and his heart will treasure up the words addressed to it."

"Unicorn is the first warrior of his nation," Black Cat replied, with a
bow; "justice and honour dwell in him: a cloud has passed over my mind
and rendered it sad."

"Let my brother open his heart to me, I know that he is one of the most
celebrated chiefs of his nation. Black Cat no longer counts the scalps
he has taken from his enemies--what is the reason that renders him sad?"

The Apache chief smiled proudly at Unicorn's remarks.

"The friend of my brother, the great pale hunter, adopted by his tribe,"
he said sharply, "is running a terrible danger at this moment."

"Wah!" the chief said; "Can that be true? Koutonepi is the flesh of my
bones; who touches him wounds me. My brother will explain."

Black Cat then narrated to Unicorn the way in which Valentine had saved
his life, the leagues formed by the Apaches and other nations of the Far
West against him, and the critical position in which the hunter now was,
owing to the influence of Red Cedar with the Indians, and the forces he
had at his command at this moment. Unicorn shook his head over the
story.

"Koutonepi is wise and intrepid," he said; "loyalty dwells in his heart,
but he cannot resist--how to help him? A man, however brave he may be,
is not equal to one hundred."

"Valentine is my brother," the Apache answered; "I have sworn to save
him. But what can I do alone?"

Suddenly a woman rushed between, the two chiefs: it was Sunbeam.

"If my master permits," she said with a suppliant look at Unicorn, "I
will help you: a woman can do many things."

There was a silence, during which the chief regarded the squaw, who
stood modest and motionless before them.

"My sister is brave," Black Cat at length said; "but a woman is a weak
creature, whose help is of but very slight weight under such grave
circumstances."

"Perhaps so," she said boldly.

"Wife," Unicorn said, as he laid his hand on her shoulder, "go whither
your heart calls you; save my brother and pay the debt you have
contracted with him: my eye will follow you, and at the first signal I
will run up."

"Thanks," the young woman said, joyfully, and kneeling before the chief,
she affectionately kissed his hand.

Unicorn went on--

"I confide this woman to my brother--I know that his heart is great: I
am at my ease; farewell."

And after a parting signal he dismissed his guest; the chief entered his
calli without looking back, and let the buffalo hide curtain fall behind
him. Sunbeam looked after him; when he had disappeared, she turned to
Black Cat.

"Let us go," she said, "to save our friend."

A few hours later, the Apache chief, followed by a young woman, rejoined
his tribe on the banks of the Gila, and on the next day but one Black
Cat arrived with his entire forces at the hill of Mad Buffalo.




CHAPTER IX.

THE MEETING.


The preceding explanations given, we will resume our story at the point
where we left it at the end of chapter seven. Sunbeam, without speaking,
offered the Spanish girl a piece of paper, a species of wooden skewer,
and a shell filled with blue paint. The Gazelle gave a start of joy.

"Oh, I understand," she said.

The chief smiled.

"The whites have a great deal of knowledge," he said, "nothing escapes
them; my daughter will draw a collar for the pale chief."

"Yes," she murmured, "but will he believe me?"

"My daughter will put her heart in that paper, and the white hunter will
recognise it."

The girl heaved a sigh.

"Let us try," she said.

With a feverish movement she took the paper from Sunbeam's hand, hastily
wrote a few words, and returned it to the young Indian, who stood
motionless and stoical before her. Sunbeam rolled up the paper, and
carefully fastened it round an arrow.

"Within an hour it will be delivered," she said, and she disappeared in
the wood with the lightness of a startled fawn. This little affair took
her less time to perform than we have been employed in describing it.
When the Indian girl, taught long before by Black Cat the part she had
to play, had gone off to deliver her message, the chief said--

"You see that, though we may not save them all, those who are dear to us
will at any rate escape."

"May Heaven grant that you are not mistaken, father," the girl said.

"Wacondah is great--his power is unbounded--he can do everything--my
daughter can hope."

After this a long conversation took place between the couple, at the end
of which, White Gazelle glided unnoticed, among the trees, and proceeded
to a hill a short distance from the post occupied by the whites, called
Elk Hill, where she had given Don Pablo the meeting. At the thought of
seeing the Mexican again, the girl had been involuntarily attacked by an
undefinable emotion; she felt her heart contracted, and all her limbs
trembled. The recollection of what had passed between her and him so
short a time back still troubled her ideas, and rendered the task she
had imposed on herself even more difficult.

At this moment she was no longer the rude amazon we have represented her
to our readers, who, hardened since her childhood to the terrible scenes
of prairie life, braved the greatest perils. She felt herself a woman;
all the manliness in her had disappeared, only leaving a timid,
trembling girl, who shuddered to find herself face to face with the man
whom she reproached herself with having so cruelly outraged, and who,
perhaps, on seeing her, would not condescend to enter into any
explanation, but turn his back on her.

All these thoughts and many others whirled about in her brain while she
proceeded with a furtive step to the place of meeting. The nearer she
drew the more lively her fears became, for her mind retraced with
greater force the indignity of her previous conduct. At length she
arrived, and found the top of the hill still deserted. A sigh of relief
escaped from her oppressed chest, and she returned thanks to Heaven for
granting her a few moments' respite to prepare herself for the solemn
interview she had craved.

But the first moment passed, another anxiety troubled her; she feared
lest Don Pablo would not accept her invitation, but despise the chance
of safety offered him. Then, with her head thrust forward, her eyes
fixed on space, and striving to sound the depths of the gloom, she
waited anxiously, counting the seconds. No one has yet been able to
calculate how many centuries each moment is composed of to a person who
is waiting. The girl was beginning to doubt Don Pablo's arrival; a
gloomy despair seized upon her, and she cursed the material
responsibility which nailed her inactively to the spot.

Let us describe in a few words what was happening at this moment on the
Hill of Mad Buffalo. Valentine, Curumilla and Don Pablo, seated on the
crest of the hill, were silently smoking, each thinking apart of the
means to be employed to escape from the painful position in which they
were, when a shrill whistle was heard, and a long arrow, passing rapidly
between the three men, buried itself deeply in the sods of the grassy
mount, at the foot of which they were seated.

"What is that?" Valentine, the first to regain his coolness, exclaimed.
"By heavens! Can the redskins be beginning the attack already?"

"Let us wake our friends," said Don Pablo.

"A friend!" grunted Curumilla, who had pulled the arrow out and examined
it attentively.

"What do you mean, chief?" the hunter asked.

"Look!" the Indian replied laconically, as he gave him the arrow, and
pointed to the paper rolled round it.

"So it is," Valentine said, as he unfastened the paper, while Curumilla
picked up a burning log and held it to him as a candle.

"Hum!" Don Pablo muttered, "this mode of corresponding appears to me
rather strange."

"We will see what it all means," the hunter answered.

He unfolded the paper, on which a few lines were written in Spanish, and
read the following--

     "The palefaces are lost; the Indian tribes, assembled from all
     parts and helped by the Pirates of the Prairies, surround them. The
     white men have no help to expect from anybody. Unicorn is too far
     off, Bloodson too much engaged in defending himself to have time to
     think of them. Don Pablo de Zarate can, if he likes, escape the
     death that menaces him, and save those who are dear to him. His
     fate is in his own hands. So soon as he has received this, let him
     leave his camp and proceed alone to Elk Hill, where he will meet a
     person prepared to supply him with the means he must seek in vain
     elsewhere; this person will await Don Pablo till sunrise. He is
     implored not to neglect this warning; tomorrow will be too late to
     save him, for he would infallibly succumb in a mad struggle.

                                                          "A FRIEND."

On reading this strange missive, the young man let his head sink on his
chest, and remained for a long time plunged in deep thought.

"What is to be done?" he muttered.

"Why go, hang it all!" Valentine answered; "Who knows whether this scrap
of paper may not contain the salvation of all of us?"

"But suppose it is treachery?"

"Treachery! Nonsense, my friend, you must be joking. The Indians are
thorough rogues and traitors, I grant; but they have a fearful terror of
anything written, which they believe emanates from the genius of evil.
No, this letter does not come from the Indians. As for the pirates, they
can use a rifle very well, but are completely ignorant of a goose quill;
and I declare, from here to Monterey on one side and to New York, on the
other, you will not find one who knows how to write. This letter,
therefore, emanates from a friend; but who that friend is, is more
difficult to guess."

"Then your opinion is to grant the meeting?"

"Why not? Taking, of course, all the precautions usual in such a case."

"Must I go alone?"

"_Canarios!_ people always go alone to such meetings: that is settled,"
Valentine said with a grin; "still, they are accompanied, and would be
fools were they not."

"Assuming that I am willing to follow your advice, I cannot leave my
father alone here."

"Your father is safe for the present; besides, he has with him the
general and Curumilla, who, I answer for it, will not let him be
surprised in our absence. However, that is your affair; still, I would
observe, that under circumstances so critical as ours, all secondary
considerations ought to be laid aside. Canarios, friend! Think that the
safety of all of us may be the reward of the venture."

"You are right, brother," the young man said boldly; "who knows whether
I might not have to reproach myself with your death and my father's if I
neglected this hint? I go."

"Good," the hunter said, "do so; for my part, I know what is left me to
do. Be at your ease," he added with his ironical smile; "you will go
alone to the meeting, but if you need help, I shall not be long in
making my appearance."

"Very good; but the chief point is to leave this place and reach Elk
Hill unnoticed by the thousand tiger-cat eyes the Apaches are probably
fixing on us at this moment."

"Trust to me for that," the hunter answered.

In fact, a few minutes later, Don Pablo, guided by Valentine, was
climbing up Elk hill, unnoticed by the Apaches.

In the meanwhile, White Gazelle was still waiting, her body bent
forward, and listening for the slightest sound that would reveal the
presence of the man she had so earnestly begged to come. Suddenly a
rough hand was laid on her shoulder, and a mocking voice muttered in her
ear:--

"Hilloh, Niña, what are you doing so far from the camp? Are you afraid
lest your enemies should escape?"

The Spaniard turned with an ill-disguised movement of disgust, and saw
Nathan, Red Cedar's eldest son.

"Yes, it is I," the bandit went on; "does that astonish you, Niña? We
arrived an hour ago with the finest collection of vultures that can be
imagined."

"But what are you doing here?" she said, scarce knowing why she asked
the question.

"Oh!" he continued, "I have also come to revenge myself; I left my
father and the others down there, and, have come to explore the country
a little. But," he added, with a sinister laugh, "that is not the
question at this moment. What the deuce sets you roaming about at this
time of night, at the risk of having an unpleasant encounter?"

"What have I to fear--am I not armed?"

"That is true," the pirate replied with a grin; "but you are pretty,
and, devil take me if I don't know fellows who, in my place, would laugh
at the playthings you have in your girdle. Yes, you are very pretty,
Niña, don't you know it? Hang me, as no one has yet told you so, I feel
very much inclined to do so; what's your opinion, eh?"

"The wretch is mad with drink," the girl muttered, as she saw the
brigand's flushed face, and his staggering legs.

"Leave me," she said to him, "the hour is badly chosen for jesting, we
have, more important matters to arrange."

"Stuff, we are all mortal, and hang me if I care what may happen
tomorrow! On the contrary, I find the hour splendidly chosen; we are
alone, no one can over hear us; what prevents us, then, from expressing
our adoration of one another?"

"No one, were it true," the girl answered resolutely; "but I am not in
the humour to listen to your chattering; so be good enough to withdraw. I
am awaiting here the war party of the Buffalo Apaches, who will soon
arrive and take up their position on this hill; instead of losing
precious time, you would do better to join Red Cedar and Stanapat, with
whom you must settle all the details of the enemy's attack."

"That is true," the bandit answered, the words having slightly sobered
him. "You are right, Niña, I will go; but what is put off is not lost; I
hope on some other day to find you not so wild, my dear. Good bye!"

And, carelessly turning, the bandit threw his rifle on his shoulder, and
went down the hill in the direction of the Apache camp. The young
Spaniard, left alone, congratulated herself on escaping the danger that
had momentarily threatened her, for she had trembled lest Don Pablo
might arrive while Nathan was with her. Still, the news of Red Cedar's
position heightened White Gazelle's apprehensions and redoubled her
alarm about those whom she had resolved to save at all hazards. At the
moment when she no longer hoped to see the young man, and was looking
out for him more to satisfy her conscience than in the chance of seeing
him, she saw, a little distance off, a man hurriedly walking towards
her, and guessed, more than recognised, that it was Don Pablo.

"At last!" she exclaimed joyfully, as she rushed to meet him.

The young man was soon by her side, but on perceiving who it was, he
fell back a pace.

"You," he said; "did you write to ask me here?"

"Yes," she answered, in a trembling voice, "I did."

"What can there be in common between us?" Don Pablo said,
contemptuously.

"Oh! Do not crush me; I now can understand how culpable and unworthy my
conduct was: pardon a madness which I deplore. Listen to me; in Heaven's
name do not despise the advice I am about to give you, for your life and
that of those you love are at stake."

"Thank Heaven, madam," the young man replied coldly; "during the few
hours we were together, I learnt to know you sufficiently to place no
faith in any of your protestations; I have only one regret at this
moment, and that is, in having allowed myself to enter the snare you
have laid for me."

"I lay a snare for you!" she exclaimed indignantly, "when I would gladly
shed the last drop of my blood to save you."

"Save me--nonsense! Ruin me, you mean," Don Pablo continued, with a
smile of contempt; "do you fancy me so foolish? Be frank, at least; your
project has succeeded, and I am in your hands; produce your accomplices,
who are doubtless hidden behind those trees, and I will not do them the
honour of disputing my life with them."

"Oh, Heaven!" the girl exclaimed, as she writhed her hands in despair,
"Am I not sufficiently punished, Don, Pablo? Listen to me, for mercy's
sake! In a few minutes it will be too late; I wish to save you, I say."

"You lie impudently," Valentine exclaimed, as he leaped from a thicket;
"only a moment ago, at that very spot, you told Nathan, the worthy son
of your accomplice, Red Cedar, of the arrival of an Apache war party;
deny it, if you dare."

This revelation was a thunderbolt for the girl; she felt that it would
be impossible for her to disabuse the man she loved, and convince him of
her innocence, in the face of this apparently so evident proof of her
treachery. She fell crushed at the young man's feet.

"Oh," he said with disgust, "this wretched woman is my evil genius."

He made a movement to retire.

"A moment," Valentine exclaimed, as he stopped him; "matters must not
end thus: let us destroy this creature, ere she causes us to be
massacred."

He coldly placed the muzzle of a pistol on the girl's temple, and she
did not flinch to escape the fate that threatened her. But Don Pablo
hastily seized his arm.

"Valentine," he said, "what are you about, my friend?"

"It is true," the hunter replied; "when so near death, I will not
dishonour myself by killing this wretch."

"Well done, brother," Don Pablo said, as he gave a glance of scorn to
the Gazelle, who implored him in vain; men like us do not assassinate
women. "Let us leave her and sell our lives dearly."

"Nonsense; death, perhaps, is not so near as you may fancy; for my part,
I do not despair about getting out of this wasps nest."

They took an anxious glance into the valley to reconnoitre their
position; the darkness was almost dissipated; the sun, though still
invisible, tinged the sky with those reddish gleams which precedes its
appearance by a few moments. As far as the eye could reach, the plain
was covered by powerful Indian detachments.

The two men saw that they had but a very slight chance of regaining
their fortress; still, accustomed as they were to attempt
impossibilities daily, they were not discouraged in the presence of the
imminent danger that menaced them. After silently shaking hands, these
two brave men raised their heads proudly, and with calm brow and
flashing eye prepared to confront the horrible death that awaited them,
if they were discovered.

"Stay, in Heaven's name," the maiden exclaimed, as she dragged herself
on her knees to Don Pablo's feet.

"Back, viper," the latter answered, "let us die bravely."

"But I will not have you die," she replied, with a piercing cry; "I
repeat that I will save you, if you consent."

"Save us! God alone can do that," the young man said mournfully; "be
glad that we will not sully our hands with your perfidious blood, and do
not trouble us further."

"Oh! Nothing will convince you then!" she said, with despair.

"Nothing," the Mexican answered coldly.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her eye beaming with joy, "I have found it. Follow
me, and you shall join your friends again."

Don Pablo, who had already gone some yards, turned back with hesitation.

"What do you fear?" she said; "you will still be able to kill me if I
deceive you. Oh," she added madly, "what do I care for death, so that I
save you!"

"In fact," Valentine remarked, "she is in the right, and then in our
position, we must let no chance slip. Perhaps, after all, she speaks the
truth."

"Yes, yes," the girl implored; "trust to me."

"Well, we will try it," said Valentine.

"Go on," Don Pablo answered laconically; "go on, we follow."

"Oh, thanks, thanks," she said eagerly, covering the the young man's
hand with kisses and tears, which she had seized against his will; "you
shall see that I can save you."

"Strange creature," the hunter said, as he wiped his eyes with the back
of his rough hand; "she is quite capable of doing what she says."

"Perhaps so," Don Pablo replied, shaking his head gloomily: "but our
position is truly desperate, my friend."

"A man can only die once, after all," the hunter remarked
philosophically, as he threw his rifle over his shoulder; "I am most
curious to know how all this will end."

"Come!" the Spanish girl said.




CHAPTER X.

A WAR STRATAGEM.


The two men followed her, and the three began crawling through the tall
grass and silently descending the hill. This painful march was
necessarily slow, owing to the innumerable precautions the fugitives
were obliged to take so as not to be seen or tracked by the scouts the
Indians had scattered all around to watch the movements of the white
men, and of any relief which might come to them.

White Gazelle walked actively in front of the hunters, looking
cautiously around, stopping to listen anxiously to the slightest sound
in the bushes; and when her fears were calmed, she went on giving the
men she guided a smile of encouragement.

"Sold!" Valentine said, with a laugh all at once, as he rested his rifle
on the ground; "Come, come, the little wench is cleverer than I
fancied."

The two men were surrounded by a numerous party of Apache Indians. Don
Pablo did not utter a word; he only looked at the girl, who continued to
smile.

"Bah!" the Frenchman muttered philosophically in an aside; "I shall kill
my seven or eight of them, and after that, we shall see."

Completely reassured by this consoling reflection, the hunter at once
regained all his clearness of mind, and looked curiously around him.
They were in the midst of Black Cat's war party, and that chief now
walked up to the hunter.

"My brother is welcome among the Buffalo Apaches," he said, nobly.

"Why jest, chief?" Valentine remarked; "I am your prisoner, do with me
what you think proper."

"Black Cat does not jest; the great pale hunter is not his prisoner, but
his friend; he has but to command and Black Cat will execute his
orders."

"What mean these words?" the Frenchman said, with astonishment; "Are you
not here, like all the members of your nation, to seize my friends and
myself?"

"Such was my intention, I allow, when I left my village some days back,
but my heart has changed since my brother saved my life, and he may have
perceived it already. If I have come here it is not to fight, but to
save him and his friends; my brother can, therefore, place confidence in
my words--my tribe will obey him as myself."

Valentine reflected for a moment, then he said, as he looked searchingly
at the chief:

"And what does Black Cat ask in return for the help he offers me?"

"Nothing; the pale hunter is my brother; if we succeed he will do as he
pleases."

"Come, come, all is for the best," Valentine said, as he turned to the
girl; "I was mistaken, so I will ask you to forgive me."

White Gazelle blushed with delight at these words.

"Then," Valentine continued, addressing the Indian chief, "I can
entirely dispose of your young men?"

"Entirely.

"They will be devoted to me?"

"I have said so, as to myself."

"Good!" said the hunter, as his face brightened; "how many warriors have
you?"

Black Cat held up ten times the fingers of his opened hands.

"One hundred?" Valentine asked.

"Yes," the chief replied, "and eight more."

"But the other tribes are far more numerous than yours?"

"They form a band of warriors twenty-two times and seven times more
numerous than mine."

"Hum! That is a tidy lot, without counting the pirates."

"Wah! There are thrice the number of the fingers of my two hands of the
Long-knives of the East."

"I fear," Don Pablo observed, "that we shall be crushed by the number of
our enemies."

"Perhaps so," Valentine, who was reflecting, answered; "where is Red
Cedar?"

"Red Cedar is with his brothers, the prairie half-breeds; he has joined
Stanapat's party."

At this moment the Apache war cry burst forth on the plain, a tremendous
discharge was heard, and the hill of the Mad Buffalo seemed begirt by a
halo of smoke and flashing lightning. The battle had began. The Indians
bravely mounted to the assault. They marched toward the hill,
continually discharging their muskets, and firing arrows at their
invisible enemies.

At the spot where the chain of hills touches the Gila, fresh parties of
Apaches could be seen incessantly arriving. They came up at a gallop, by
troops of three to twenty men at a time. Their horses were covered with
foam, leading to the presumption that they had made a long journey. The
Apaches were in their war paint, covered with all sorts of ornaments and
arms, with their bow and quiver on their back, and their musket in their
hands. Their heads were crowned with feathers, among them being several
magnificent black and white eagle plumes, with the large falling crest.
Seated on handsome saddlecloths of panther skin, lined with red, all had
the lower part of the body naked, with the exception of a long strip of
wolf skin passed over the shoulder. Their shields were ornamented with
feathers, and party coloured cloth. These men, thus accoutred, had
something grand and majestic about them which affected the imagination
and inspired terror.

Many of them at once climbed the heights, lashing their wearied horses,
so to arrive sooner at the battlefield, while singing and uttering their
war cry.

The contest seemed most obstinate in the neighbourhood of the
palisades; the two Mexicans and Curumilla, protected behind their
entrenchments, replied to the Apaches with a deadly fire, bravely
exciting each other to die weapons in hand. Several corpses already lay
on the plain; riderless horses galloped in every direction, and the
cries of the wounded were mingled with the yells of defiance of the
assailants.

What we have described in so many words, Valentine and Don Pablo
perceived in a few seconds, with the infallible glance of men long
accustomed to prairie life.

"Come, chief," the hunter said, quickly, "we must rejoin our friends;
help us; if not, they are lost."

"Good," Black Cat answered; "the pale hunter will place himself, with
his friend, in the midst of my detachment; in a few minutes he will be
on the hill. Above all, the pale chief must leave me to act."

"Do so; I trust entirely to you."

Black Cat said a few words in a low voice to the warriors who
accompanied him; they at once collected round the two hunters, who
entirely disappeared in their midst.

"Oh, oh," Don Pablo said, anxiously, "just look at this, my friend."

Valentine smiled as he took his arm.

"I have read the chief's intention," he said, "he is employing the only
way possible. Do not be alarmed, all is for the best."

Black Cat placed himself at the head of his detachment, and gave a
signal. A fearful yell burst through the air--the Buffalo tribe had
sounded its war cry. The Apaches, carrying the two men with them, rushed
furiously toward the hill, and ere Valentine and Don Pablo knew what was
happening, they had rejoined their friends, and Black Cat's warriors
fled in every direction, as if a fearful panic had seized on them.

Still the fight was not over; Stanapat's Indians rushed like tigers on
the palisades, and let themselves be killed without recoiling an inch.
The fight, if prolonged, must end fatally to the whites, whose strength
was becoming exhausted. Stanapat and Red Cedar understood this, and
hence redoubled their efforts to crush the enemy.

Suddenly, at the moment when the Apaches rushed furiously against the
whites to attempt a final assault; the war cry of the Coras was heard,
mingled with the discharge of firearms. The Apaches were surprised, and
hesitated; Red Cedar looked around, and uttered a curse; the war cry of
the Comanches rose behind the camp.

"Forward! Forward at all risks!" the squatter howled, as, followed by
his sons and some of his men, he rushed by toward the hill.

But the scene had changed as if by enchantment. Black Cat, on seeing the
help that had arrived for his friends, effected a junction with Unicorn;
the united bands attacked the Apaches on the flank, while Moukapec, at
the head of two hundred picked warriors of his nation, rushed on their
rear.

The flight began, and soon changed into a rout; Red Cedar, and a small
party of pirates collected around him, alone offered any resistance.
From assailants they had become assailed, and there must be an end to
it, or in a few minutes all would be over, as their retreat would be cut
off.

"Hurrah!" Red Cedar shouted, as he waved his rifle over his head like a
mace; "Down with the dogs! Take their scalps!"

"Take their scalps!" his companions exclaimed, imitating his movements,
and massacring all that opposed their passage.

They had managed to clear a bloody way, and were slowly moving toward
the river, when a man boldly threw himself before Red Cedar--it was
Moukapec.

"I bring you my scalp, dog of the palefaces!" he shouted, as he dealt a
blow at him with his tomahawk.

"Thanks," the bandit answered, as he parried the blow.

Eagle-wing bounded forward like a hyena, and before his enemy could
prevent it, buried his knife in his thigh. Red Cedar uttered a yell of
rage on feeling himself wounded, and drew his knife with one hand, while
with the other he seized the Indian by the throat. The latter felt that
he was lost; the blade flashed above his head, and was buried to the
hilt in his chest.

"Ah! Ah!" Red Cedar grinned, as he let down his enemy who rolled on the
ground, "I fancy our accounts are settled this time."

"Not yet," the Coras said, with a triumphant smile, and with a dying
effort he fired his rifle at the squatter.

The latter let go his reins, and fell by the side of the Indian.

"I die avenged," Eagle-wing said, as he writhed in a last convulsion.

"Oh, I am not dead yet," Red Cedar replied, as he rose on one knee and
cleft the Indian's skull; "I shall escape, never fear."

Red Cedar's shoulder was broken, still, thanks to the help of his
comrades, who did not give ground an inch, he was able to get on his
horse again, and Sutter and Nathan fastened him to the saddle.

"Back! Back!" he shouted, "Else we are lost! Each man for himself!"

The pirates obeyed him, and began flying in various directions, closely
followed by the Comanches and Coras. Still some managed to reach the
virgin forest, where they disappeared, others the river, which they
swam, Red Cedar being one of the former. Valentine and his friends, as
soon as they saw the issue of the fight, hastened to leave the hill of
the Mad Buffalo, and went down into the plain with the intention of
capturing Red Cedar; unfortunately they only arrived in time to see him
disappear in the distance; still, the unexpected result of the fight had
done them an immense service, not only by rescuing them from the false
position in which they were, but also by breaking up the league of the
Indian tribes, who, startled by the immense losses they had suffered,
would doubtless retire and leave the white men to settle their disputes
without interfering further in the quarrel.

As for Red Cedar, his band was annihilated or, dispersed, while himself,
seriously wounded, was no longer to be feared. The capture of this man,
forced to wander like a wild beast over the prairie, only became a
question of time. Stanapat had also escaped with a few warriors, no one
knowing in what direction he had gone.

The three united parties camped on the battlefield, according to their
custom. The Indians first occupied themselves with scalping the corpses
of their enemies. Singular to say, the victors had made no prisoners;
the fight had been so obstinate, that every man had only thought of
killing his enemy, instead of seizing him. Moukapec's body was raised
respectfully, and interred on the hill of Mad Buffalo, by the side of
the terrible chief who had first chosen the sepulchre. The sun set at
the moment when the last duties had been paid to the fallen warrior, and
the council fires were lighted. When all had taken their seats, and the
calumet had gone the round, Valentine rose.

"Chiefs," he said, "my friends and I thank you for your generous efforts
in trying to deliver the prairies of the Far West from the bandit who
has so long desolated them; we are not merely pursuing an idle
vengeance, but a work of humanity; this villain dishonours the name of
man, and the race to which he belongs. At the present moment, of the
numerous bandits who accompanied him, few are left him. The band of the
malefactors, which was the terror of the prairies, no longer exists; and
their chief himself, I feel convinced, will soon fall into our power.
Be ready, when necessary, to help us, as you have done today; until
then, return to your villages, and believe that, far or near, we shall
retain the recollection of the services you have rendered us, and that,
in case of need, you can count on us as we have ever done on you."

After uttering these words which the Indians applauded, Valentine sat
down again. There was a lengthened silence, employed by the Indians in
conscientiously smoking their calumets. Black Cat was the first to break
the silence.

"Let my brothers listen," he said; "the words I utter are inspired by
the Master of Life; the cloud that obscured my mind has passed away
since my Coras and Comanche brothers, those two brave nations, have
restored me the place, to which I had a right, at their council fires.
Unicorn is a wise chief, his friendship is precious to me. I hope that
the Wacondah will never allow between him and me, or between my young
men and his, during the next thousand and fifty moons, the slightest
misunderstanding which may rupture the friendship existing at this
moment."

Unicorn removed his pipe from his lips, bowed to Black Cat with a smile,
and answered--

"My brother Black Cat has spoken well; my heart quivered with joy on
hearing him. Why should we not be friends? Is not the prairie large
enough and wide enough for us? Are not the buffaloes sufficiently
numerous? Let my brothers listen: I seek around me in vain the war
hatchet; it is buried so deeply, that the sons and the grandsons of our
children will never succeed in digging it up."

Other speeches were made by several chiefs, and the best intelligence
did not cease to reign between the allies. At daybreak, they separated
in the most cordial manner, each returning to his village. Valentine and
his party remained alone. White Gazelle was leaning pensively against
the trunk of a tree a few paces from them.




CHAPTER XI.

IN THE FOREST.


Red Cedar, carried a long distance from the battlefield by the furious
galloping of his steed, which he had no longer the strength to control,
went on straight ahead, not knowing what direction he was following. In
this man, hitherto so firm, and who possessed so energetic a will, the
thoughts were overclouded as if by enchantment: the loss of blood, the
repeated jolts his horse gave him, had plunged him into a state of
insensibility. Had he not been so securely fastened to his saddle, he
would have fallen from it twenty times.

He went on with hanging arms, body bent over his horse's neck, and eyes
half closed, hardly conscious of what happened to him, or trying to
discover. Shaken to the right, shaken to the left, he watched with
unmeaning eye the trees and rocks fly past on either side: no longer
thinking, but living in a horrible dream, a prey to the strangest and
wildest hallucinations. Night succeeded to day: his horse continued its
journey, bounding like a frightened jaguar over the obstacles that
opposed it, followed by a pack of howling coyotes, and seeking in vain
to get rid of the inert weight that oppressed it.

At length the horse stumbled in the darkness, and fell to the ground,
uttering a plaintive neigh. Up to this moment Red Cedar had
preserved--we will not say a complete and clear knowledge of the
position in which he was--but at any rate a certain consciousness of the
life that still dwelt in him. When his exhausted horse fell, the bandit
felt a sharp pain in his head, and that was all; he fainted away while
stammering an imprecation, the last protest of the villain, who, to the
last moment, denied the existence of that God who smote him.

When he re-opened his eyes, under the impression of an indefinable
feeling of comfort, the sun was shining through the tufted branches of
the forest trees, and the birds, concealed beneath the green foliage,
were singing their joyous concerts. Red Cedar gave vent to a sigh of
relief, and looked languidly around him; his horse was lying dead a few
paces from him. He was seated against the trunk of a tree, while Ellen,
kneeling by his side, was anxiously following the progress of his return
to life.

"Oh, oh," the bandit muttered hoarsely, "I am still alive then."

"Yes, thanks to God, father," Ellen answered softly.

The bandit looked at her.

"God!" he said, as if speaking to himself; "God!" he added with an
ironical smile.

"He it was who saved you, father," the girl said.

"Child!" Red Cedar muttered, as he passed his left hand over his
forehead; "God is only a word, never utter it again."

Ellen drooped her head; but with the feeling of life pain returned.

"Oh! How I suffer," he said.

"You are dangerously wounded, father. Alas! I have done what I can to
relieve you; but I am only a poor ignorant girl, and perhaps what I have
attempted was not the right treatment."

Red Cedar turned to her, and an expression of tenderness flashed in his
eyes.

"You love me, then?" he said.

"Is it not my duty to do so, father?"

The bandit made no reply; the smile we know played round his Violet
lips.

"Alas! I have been seeking you a long time, father; this night chance
enabled me to find you again."

"Yes, you are a good girl, Ellen. I have only you left now. I know not
what has become of my sons. Oh," he said with a start of fury, "that
wretch Ambrosio is the cause of all; had it not been for him, I should
still be at the Paso del Norte, in the forests of which I had made
myself master."

"Think no more of that, father; your condition demands the greatest
calmness; try and sleep for some hours--that will do you good."

"Sleep," the bandit said, "can I sleep? No," he added with a movement of
repulsion, "I would sooner keep awake; when my eyes are closed, I
see.... No, no, I must not sleep."

He did not finish his sentence. Ellen gazed on him with pity, mingled
with terror. The bandit, weakened by the loss of blood and the fever
produced by his wounds, felt something to which he had hitherto been a
stranger--it was fear. Perhaps his conscience evoked the gnawing remorse
of his crimes.

There was a lengthened silence. Ellen attentively followed the bandit's
movements, whom the fever plunged into a species of somnolency, and who
at times started with inarticulate cries, and looking around him in
terror. Toward evening, he opened his eyes, and seemed to grow stronger:
his eyes were less haggard, his words more connected.

"Thanks, child," he said, "you are a good creature; where are we?"

"I do not know, father; this forest is immense. I tell you, again, it
was God who guided me to you."

"No, you are mistaken, Ellen," he replied with that sarcastic smile
peculiar to him; "it was not God who brought you here, but the demon,
who feared the loss of so good a friend as I am."

"Speak not so, father," the girl said sadly; "the night is rapidly
setting in darkness will soon surround us; let me on the contrary, pray
to Heaven to keep far from us the perils that threaten us during the
night."

"Child! Does a night in the woods frighten you so, when your whole life
has been spent in the desert? Light a fire of dry wood to keep the wild
beasts at bay, and place my pistols near me, these precautions will be
better, believe me, than your useless prayers."

"Do not blaspheme," the girl said hurriedly; "you are wounded, almost
dying; I am weak, and incapable of helping you effectually. Our life is
in the hands of Him whose power you deny in vain. He alone, if He will,
can save us."

The bandit burst into a dry and snapping laugh.

"Let Him do so then, in the demon's name, and I will believe in Him."

"Father, in Heaven's name, speak not so," the maiden murmured in sorrow.

"Do what I tell you, you little fool," the squatter interrupted her
brutally, "and leave me in peace."

Ellen turned to wipe away the tears this harsh language forced from her,
and rose sorrowfully to obey Red Cedar, who looked after her.

"Come, you goose," he said to her again, "I did not intend to hurt your
feelings."

The girl then collected all the dry branches she could find, which she
made into a pile and kindled. The wood soon began cracking, and a long
and bright flame rose to the sky. She then took from his holsters the
squatter's still loaded pistols, placed them within reach of his arm,
and then seated herself again by his side. Red Cedar smiled his
satisfaction.

"There," he said, "now we have nothing more to fear; if the wild beasts
pay us a visit, we will receive them; we will pass the night quietly. As
for the morrow, well, we shall see."

Ellen, without replying, wrapped him up as well as she could in the
blankets and hides that were on the horse, in order to protect him from
the cold. So much attention and self-denial affected the bandit.

"And you, Ellen," he asked her; "will you not keep a few of these skins
for yourself?"

"Why should I, father? The fire will be enough for me," she said gently.

"But, at any rate, eat something, you must be hungry; for, if I am not
mistaken, you have had nothing the whole day."

"That is true, father, but I am not hungry."

"No matter," he said, pressing her, "too long a fast may be injurious to
you; I insist on your eating."

"It is useless, father," she said with some hesitation.

"Eat, I say," he went on, "if not for your sake, for mine; eat a
mouthful to restore your strength, for we know what awaits us in the
next few hours."

"Alas! I would readily obey you," she said, letting her eyes sink; "but
it is impossible."

"And why so, pray? When I tell you that I insist."

"Because I have nothing to eat."

These words crushed the bandit like the blow of a club.

"Oh, it is frightful," he muttered; "poor girl, pardon me Ellen, I am a
villain, unworthy of such devotion as yours."

"Calm yourself, father, I implore you; I am not hungry, a night is soon
passed, and tomorrow, as you said, we shall see; but before then, I am
convinced God will come to our aid."

"God!" the squatter exclaimed, gnashing his teeth.

"God, ever God, father," the girl answered, with sparkling eye and
trembling lip; "God, ever; for, however unworthy we may be of His pity;
He is merciful, and perhaps will not abandon us."

"Build then on him, fool as you are, and you will be dead in two days."

"No," she exclaimed, joyfully, "for He has heard me, and sends us help."

The bandit looked and fell back on the ground, closing his eyes, and
muttering in a hollow voice the words which for some time past had
constantly risen from his heart to his lips, and involuntarily mastered
him.

"God! Can He exist?"

A terrible question which he incessantly asked himself, and to which his
obstinate conscience was beginning to respond, for the granite coating
of his heart was beginning to crumble away beneath the repeated blows of
remorse. But Ellen did not notice Red Cedar's state of prostration, she
had risen and rushed forward, with outstretched arms, crying as loudly
as her voice permitted her--"Help, help!"

The young girl had fancied she heard, for some minutes past, a peculiar
rustling in the foliage. This noise, at first remote and almost
unnoticeable, had rapidly approached; soon lights had glistened through
the trees, and the footsteps of a numerous party had distinctly smitten
her ear. In fact, she had scarce gone a dozen yards, ere she found
herself in the presence of a dozen mounted Indians, holding torches, and
escorting two persons wrapped in long cloaks.

"Help! Help!" Ellen repeated, as she fell on her knees, with
outstretched arms.

The horsemen stopped; one of them dismounted, and ran to the girl, whom
he took by the hands, and forced to rise.

"Help for whom, my poor girl?" he asked her in a soft voice.

On hearing the stranger's accent so full of tenderness, she felt hope
returning to her heart.

"Oh!" she murmured with joy; "my father is saved."

"Our life is in the hands of God," the stranger said, with emotion;
"but lead me to your father, and all a man can do to help him, I will."

"It is God who sends you, bless you, my father!" the maiden said, as she
kissed his hand.

In the movement he had made to raise her, the stranger's cloak flew
open, and the girl had recognised a priest.

"Let us go," he said.

"Come!"

The girl ran joyously forward, and the little party followed her.

"Father, father," she exclaimed, as she came near the wounded man, "I
was certain that Heaven would not abandon us; I bring you succour."

At this moment the strangers entered the clearing where the bandit lay.
The Indians and the other travellers remained some paces in the rear,
while the priest, quickly approached Red Cedar, over whom he bent. At
his daughter's words the bandit opened his eyes, and turned his head
with an effort in the direction whence this unexpected help arrived.
Suddenly his face, before so pale, was covered with a cadaverous tinge;
his eyes were enlarged and became haggard, a convulsive quiver agitated
his limbs, and he fell heavily back, muttering with terror--

"Oh! Father Seraphin!"

It was really the missionary; without appearing to remark the squatter's
emotion, he seized his arm in order to feel his pulse. Red Cedar had
fainted, but Ellen had heard the words he uttered, and though she could
not understand their meaning, she guessed that a terrible drama was
concealed beneath this revelation.

"My father!" she exclaimed mournfully, as she fell at the priest's
knees, "My father, have pity on him, do not desert him!"

The missionary smiled with an expression of ineffable goodness.

"Daughter," he answered gently, "I am a minister of God, and the dress I
wear commands me to forget insults. Priests have no enemies, all men are
their brothers; reassure yourself, your father has not only his body to
be saved, but also, his soul. I will undertake this cure, and God, who
permitted me to take this road, will give me the necessary strength to
succeed."

"Oh, thanks, thanks, holy father," the girl murmured, as she burst into
tears.

"Do not thank me, poor girl; address your thanks to God, for He alone
has done all. Now leave me to attend to this unhappy man, who is
suffering, and whose miserable state claims all my care."

And gently removing the maiden, Father Seraphin opened his medicine box,
which he took from the pommel of his saddle, and prepared to dress his
patient's wounds. In the meanwhile the Indians had gradually approached,
and seeing the state of affairs, they dismounted to prepare the
encampment, for they foresaw that, with Red Cedar in his present
condition, the missionary would pass the night at this spot.

The person who accompanied Father Seraphin was a female of very advanced
age, but whose features, ennobled by years, had a far from common
expression of kindness and grandeur. When she saw that the missionary
was preparing to dress the wounds, she went up to him and said in a soft
voice--

"Can I not help you in any way, holy father? You know that I am anxious
to begin my apprenticeship in nursing."

These words were uttered with an accent of indescribable goodness. The
priest looked at her with a sublime expression, and, taking her hand, he
made her stoop over the wounded man.

"Heaven has decreed that what now happens should take place," he said to
her; "you have hardly landed in this country, and entered the desert to
seek your son, when the Omnipotent imposes on you a task which must
rejoice your heart by bringing you face to face with this man."

"What do you mean, father?" she said with amazement.

"Mother of Valentine Guillois," he continued, with an accent full of
supreme majesty, "look at this man well, so as to be able to recognise
him hereafter; it is Red Cedar, the wretch of whom I have so often
spoken to you, the implacable foe of your son."

At this terrible revelation the poor woman gave a start of fear; but
surmounting with a superhuman effort the feeling of revulsion she had at
first experienced, she answered in a calm voice--

"No matter, father, the man suffers, and I will nurse him."

"Good, Madam," the priest said, with emotion; "Heaven will give you
credit for this evangelic abnegation."




CHAPTER XII.

THE MISSIONARY.


We will now briefly explain by what strange concourse of events Father
Seraphin, whom we have for so long a period lost out of sight, and
Valentine's mother, had arrived so providentially to help Red Cedar.

When the missionary left the Trail-hunter, he proceeded, as he expressed
a wish, among the Comanches, with the intention of preaching the gospel
to them, a holy duty which he had begun to put in execution long before.
Father Seraphin, through his character and piety of manner, had made
friends of all these children of nature, and converted numerous
proselytes in various tribes, especially in Unicorn's.

The journey was long and fatiguing to the Comanche village, and the
means of transport were, in a desert country, only traversed by nomadic
hordes, which wander without any settled purpose in these vast
solitudes. The missionary, however, did not recoil; too weak to ride on
account of the scarce cicatrised wound he had received a short time
previously, he had, like the first Fathers of the Church, bravely
undertaken this journey on foot, which it is almost impossible to
accomplish on horseback.

But human strength has its limits, which it cannot go beyond. Father
Seraphin, in spite of his courage, was obliged tacitly to allow that he
had undertaken a task which he was too weak to carry out. One night he
fell, exhausted by fever and fatigue, on the floor of some Indians, who
nursed and brought him round. These Indians, who were half civilised,
and had been Christians for a long time, would not allow the priest, in
his present state of health, to continue his journey; on the contrary,
taking advantage of the fever which kept him down and rendered it
impossible for him to see what was done with him, they conveyed him
back, by slow stages, to Texas.

When Father Seraphin, thanks to his youth and powerful constitution, had
at length conquered the malady which kept him confined to his bed for
more than a month between life and death, his surprise was great to find
himself at Galveston, in the house of the episcopal head of the Mission.
The worthy prelate, employing the spiritual powers given him by his
character and his title, had insisted on the missionary going on board
of a vessel just starting for Havre, and which was only waiting for a
favourable wind.

Father Seraphin obeyed with sorrow the commands of his superior; the
Bishop was obliged to prove to him that his health was almost ruined,
and that his native air could alone restore it, ere he would resign
humbly to obedience, and, as he said bitterly, fly and abandon his post.
The missionary started then, but with the firm resolution of returning
so soon as it was possible.

The voyage from Galveston to Havre was a pleasant one; two months after
leaving Texas, Father Seraphin set foot on his native soil, with an
emotion which only those who have wandered for a long time in foreign
parts can comprehend. Since accident brought him back to France, the
missionary profited by it to visit his family, whom he never expected to
see again, and by whom he was received with transports of joy, the
greater because his return was so unexpected.

The life of a missionary is very hard; those who have seen them at work
in the great American desert can alone appreciate all the holy
abnegation and true courage there is in the hearts of these simple and
truly good men, who sacrifice their life, without the hope of possible
reward; in preaching to the Indians. They nearly all fall in some
obscure corner of the prairie, victims to their devotion, or if they
resist for five or six years, they return to their country prematurely
aged, almost blind, overwhelmed with infirmities, and forced to live a
miserable life among men who misunderstand and too often calumniate
them.

Father Seraphin's time was counted, every hour he passed away from his
beloved Indians he reproached himself with as a robbery he committed on
them. He tore himself from his parent's arms, and hastened to Havre, to
profit by the first chance that presented itself for returning to Texas.

One evening, while Father Seraphin was seated on the beach,
contemplating the sea that separated him from the object of his life,
and thinking of the proselytes he had left in America, and whom,
deprived of his presence, he trembled to find again, plunged in their
old errors--he heard sobs near him. He raised his head, and saw at some
paces from him a woman kneeling on the sand and weeping; from time to
time broken words escaped from her lips. Father Seraphin was affected by
this sorrow; he approached, and heard the words: "My son, my poor son!
Oh, Heaven restore me my son!"

This woman's face was bathed in tears, her eyes were raised to Heaven,
and an expression of profound despair was imprinted on her countenance.
Father Seraphin understood with the instinct of his heart that there was
a great misfortune here that required unsolving, and addressed the
stranger.

"Poor woman, what do you want here? Why do you weep?

"Alas! Father," she answered, "I have lost all hope of being happy in
this world."

"Who knows, madam? Tell me your misfortunes. God is great; perhaps He
will give me the power to console you."

"You are right, father; God never deserts the afflicted, and it is above
all when hope fails them that He comes to their assistance."

"Speak then with confidence."

The strange woman began in a voice broken by the internal emotion which
she suffered.

"For more than ten years," she said, "I have been separated from my son.
Alas! Since he went to America, in spite of all the steps I have taken,
I have never received news of him, or learned what has become of him,
whether he be dead or alive."

"Since the period of which you speak, then, no sign, no information
however slight, has reassured you as to the fate of him you mourn?"

"No, my father, since my son, the brave lad, determined to accompany his
foster-brother to Chili."

"Well," the priest interrupted, "you might enquire in Chili."

"I did so, father."

"And learned nothing?"

"Pardon me, my son's foster-brother is married, and possesses a large
fortune in Chili. I applied to him. My son left him about a year after
his departure from France, without telling him the motive that urged him
to act thus, and he never heard of him again, in spite of all his
efforts to find him; all that he discovered was that he had buried
himself in the virgin forests of the Great Chaco, accompanied by two
Indian chiefs."

"It is, indeed, strange," the priest muttered thoughtfully.

"My son's foster-brother frequently writes to me; thanks to him, I am
rich for a woman of my condition, who is accustomed to live on a little.
In each of his letters he begs me to come and end my days with him; but
it is my son, my poor child, I wish to see again; in his arms I should
like to close my eyes. Alas! That consolation will not be granted me.
Oh! Father, you cannot imagine what grief it is for a mother to live
alone, far from the only being who gave joy to her latter days. Though I
have not seen him for ten years, I picture him to myself as on the day
he left me, young and strong, and little suspecting that he was leaving
me forever."

While uttering these words, the poor woman could not repress her tears
and sobs.

"Courage! life is but one long trial; is you have suffered so greatly,
perchance God, whose mercy is infinite, reserves a supreme joy for your
last days of life."

"Alas, father, as you know, nothing can console a mother for the absence
of her son, for he is her flesh, her heart. Every ship that arrives, I
run, I inquire, and ever, ever the same silence! And yet, shall I
confess it to you? I have something in me which tells me he is not dead,
and I shall see him again; it is a secret presentiment for which I
cannot account: I fancy that if my son were dead, something would have
snapped in my heart, and I should have ceased to exist long ago. That
hope sustains me, in spite of myself; it gives me the strength to live."

"You are a mother in accordance with the gospel; I admire you."

"You are mistaken, father; I am only a poor creature, very simple and
very unhappy; I have only one feeling in my heart, but it fills me
entirely: love of my son. Oh, could I see him, were it only for a
moment, I fancy I should die happy. At long intervals, a banker writes
me to come to him, and he pays me money, sometimes small sums, at others
large. When I ask him whence the money comes, he says that he does not
know himself, and that a strange correspondent has requested him to pay
it to me. Well, father, every time I receive money in this way, I fancy
that it comes from my son, that he is thinking of me, and I am happy."

"Do not doubt that it is your son who sends you this money."

"Is it not?" she said, with a start of joy. "Well, I feel so persuaded
of that, that I keep it; all the sums are at my house, intact, in the
order as I received them. Often, when grief crushes me more than usual,
when the weight that oppresses my heart seems to me too crushing, I look
at them, I let them slip through my fingers, as I talk to them, and I
fancy my son answers me; he bids me hope I shall see him again, and I
feel hope return. Oh! You must think me very foolish to tell you all
this, father: but of what can a mother speak, save of her son? Of what
can she think but her son?"

Father Seraphin gazed on her with a tenderness mingled with respect.
Such grandeur and simplicity in a woman of so ordinary a rank overcame
him, and he felt tears running down his cheeks which he did not attempt
to check.

"Oh, holy and noble creature!" he said to her; "Hope, hope; God watches
over you."

"You believe so too, father? Oh, thanks for that. You have told me
nothing, and yet I feel comforted through having seen you and let my
heart overflow in your presence. It is because you are good, you have
understood my sorrow, for you, too, have doubtless suffered."

"Alas; madam, each of us has a cross to bear in this world; happy is he
whom his burden does not crush."

"Pardon my having troubled you with my sorrows," she said, as she
prepared to leave; "I thank you for your kind words."

"I have nothing to pardon you; but permit me to ask you one more
question."

"Do so, father."

"I am a missionary. For several years I have been in America, whose
immense solitudes I have traversed in every direction. I have seen many
things, met many persons during my travels. Who knows? Perhaps, without
knowing it, I may have met your son, and may give the information you
have been awaiting so long in vain."

The poor mother gave him a glance of indefinable meaning, and placed her
hand on her heart to still its hurried beating.

"Madam, God directs all our actions. He decreed our meeting on this
beach; the hope you have lost I may perhaps be destined to restore you.
What is your son's name?"

At this moment Father Seraphin had a truly inspired air; his voice was
commanding, and his eyes shone with a bright and fascinating fire.

"Valentine Guillois!" the poor woman said, as she fell in almost a
fainting state on a log of wood left on the beach.

"Oh!" the priest exclaimed; "On your knees and thank Heaven! Console
yourself, poor mother! Your son lives!"

She drew herself up as if moved by a spring, and fell on her knees
sobbing, and held out her hands to the man who restored her son to her.

But it was too much for her: so strong against grief, could not resist
joy: she fainted. Father Seraphin ran up to her and recalled her to
life. We will not describe the ensuing scene, but a week later the
missionary and the hunter's mother started for America. During the
voyage Father Seraphin fully described to his companion what had
happened to her son during his long absence, the reasons of his silence,
and the sacred remembrance in which he had ever held her. The poor
mother listened, radiant with happiness, to those stories, which she
begged to hear over and over again, for she was never tired of hearing
her son spoken of.

On reaching Galveston, the missionary, justly fearing for her the
fatigues of a journey through the desert, wished to induce her to remain
in that city till her son came to her, but at that proposition the
mother shook her head.

"No," she said, resolutely, "I have not come here to stop in a town: I
wish to spend the few days left me to live by his side; I have suffered
enough to be avaricious of my happiness, and desire not to lose an atom.
Let us go, father. Lead me to my child."

Before a will so firmly expressed, the priest found himself powerless;
he did not recognise the right of insisting longer; he merely tried to
spare his companion the fatigue of his journey as far as possible.

They, therefore, started for Galveston, proceeding by short stages to
the Far West. On reaching the border of civilised countries, Father
Seraphin took an escort of devoted Indians to protect his companion.
They had been in the desert for six days, when suddenly heaven brought
them face to face with Red Cedar, dying without help in the heart of the
primeval forest.




CHAPTER XIII.

RETURN TO LIFE.


Charity is a virtue loudly preached in our age, but unfortunately
practised by few. The story of the good Samaritan finds but scanty
application in the Old World, and if we would discover charity exercised
sacredly and simply, as the gospel teaches, we must obtain our examples
from the deserts of the New World.

This is sad to say, even more sad to prove, but mankind is not to blame
for it; the age alone must be held responsible for this egotism, which
has for some years past been planted in the heart of man, and reigns
there supreme. To two causes must be attributed the personalism and
egotism which crown the actions of the great human family in Europe; the
discovery of gold in California, Australia, and on Frazer River, and,
above all, the Stock Exchange.

The Bourse is the scourge of the Old World; so soon as everybody fancied
that he was enabled to enrich himself between today and tomorrow, no one
thought any longer of his neighbour, who remained poor, save as being
incapable of ameliorating his position. The result is, that the men who
have the courage to leave the intoxicating maëlstrom that surrounds
them, to despise those riches which flash around them, and go under the
impulse of Christian Charity, the holiest and least rewarded of all the
virtues, to bury themselves among savages, amid hordes most hostile to
every good and honourable feeling, in the most deadly countries--such
men, we say, who, impelled solely by a divine feeling, abandon all
earthly enjoyments, are chosen vessels, and in every respect deserve
well of humanity.

Their number is much larger than might be supposed at the first blush,
and that is very logical; the passion for devotion must go side by side
with the thirst for gold, in order that the eternal balance of good and
evil which governs the world should remain in those equal proportions
which are conditions of its vitality and prosperity.

Red Cedar's condition was serious; the moral commotion he underwent in
recognising the man whom he had once attempted to assassinate, had
brought on a frightful attack of delirium. The wretch, a prey to the
most gnawing remorse, was tortured by the hideous phantoms of his
victim, evoked by his diseased imagination, and which stalked round his
bed like a legion of demons. The night he passed was terrible. Father
Seraphin, Ellen, and Valentine's mother did not leave him for a second,
watching over him anxiously, and frequently compelled to struggle with
him in order to prevent him dashing his head against the trees, in the
paroxysms of the crisis that tortured him.

Strange coincidence! The bandit had a similar wound in his shoulder to
the one he had formerly dealt the missionary, which had compelled the
latter to go and seek a cure in Europe, a voyage from which he had only
returned a few days, when Providence permitted him to find the man who
wished to assassinate him, lying almost dead at the foot of a tree.

Towards day the crisis grew calmer, and the squatter fell into a species
of slumber, which deprived him of the faculties of feeling and
perception. No one else slept during this long and mournful night, spent
in the heart of the forest; and when Father Seraphin saw that Red Cedar
was calmer, he ordered the Indians to prepare a litter to receive him.
They were much disinclined to the task; they had known the squatter for
a lengthened period, and these primitive men could not understand why,
instead of killing him when chance threw him into his power, the
missionary lavished his assistance on such a villain, who had committed
so many crimes, and whose death would have been a blessing to the
prairie. It required all the devotion they had vowed to Father Seraphin
for them to consent to do, very unwillingly we allow, what he ordered
them.

When the litter was, ready, dry leaves and grass were spread over it,
and the squatter was laid on this couch in an almost complete state of
insensibility. Before leaving the forest the missionary, who knew how
necessary it was to rekindle the drooping faith of the redskins, for the
sake of the patient, resolved to offer the holy sacrifice of mass. An
altar was improvised on a grassy mound, covered with a rag of white
cloth, and the mass was read, served by one of the Indians, who offered
his services spontaneously.

Assuredly, in the large European cathedrals, beneath the splendid arches
of stone, blackened by time, to the imposing murmur of the organ
re-echoing through the aisles, the ceremonies of the faith are performed
with greater pomp; but I doubt whether they be so with more magnificent
simplicity, or are listened to with greater fervour than this mass, said
in the heart of a forest, accompanied by the striking melodies of the
desert, by the pale-browed priest, whose eyes glistened with a holy
enthusiasm, and who prayed for his assassin groaning at his feet.

When mass was over, Father Seraphin gave a signal, four Indians raised
the litter on their shoulders, and the party set out, Ellen being
mounted on the horse of one of the bearers. The journey was long; the
missionary had left Galveston to go in search of Valentine, but a hunter
accustomed to traverse great distances, and whose life is made up of
incessant excursions, is very difficult to discover in the desert; the
missionary, therefore, decided on going to the winter village of the
Comanches, where he was certain to obtain precise information about the
man he wished to see.

But his meeting with Red Cedar prevented him from carrying out this
plan; Unicorn and Valentine were too inveterate against the squatter for
the missionary to hope that they would consent to resign their
vengeance. The conjuncture was difficult; Red Cedar was a proscript in
the fullest sense of the term; one of those outlaws, whose number is
fortunately very limited, who have the whole human race as their foe,
and to whom every country is hostile.

And yet this man must be saved; and after ripe reflection, Father
Seraphin's resolution was formed. He proceeded, followed by his whole
party, to the grotto where we have met him before, a grotto which often
served as the Trail-hunter's abode, but where, in all probability, he
would not be at this moment. Through an extraordinary chance, the
missionary passed unseen within a pistol shot of the spot where
Valentine and his friends were encamped.

At sunset they prepared for passing the night; Father Seraphin removed
the bandage he had placed on Red Cedar's wounds, and dressed them: the
latter allowed it to be done, not seeming to notice that any attention
was being paid him; his prostration was extreme. The wounds were all
healthy; that on the shoulder was the worst, but all foreboded a speedy
recovery.

When supper was over, prayers said, and the Indians, wrapped in their
blankets, were lying on the grass to rest from the fatigues of the day,
the missionary, after assuring himself that Red Cedar was quietly
sleeping, made a sign to the two women to come and sit by his side, near
the fire lit to keep off wild beasts. Father Seraphin was slightly
acquainted with Ellen; he remembered to have frequently met the girl,
and even conversed with her in the forest, at the period when her father
had so audaciously installed himself on Don Miguel Zarate's estates.

Ellen's character had pleased him; he had found in her such simplicity
of heart and innate honour, that he frequently asked himself how so
charming a creature could be the daughter of so hardened a villain as
Red Cedar: this seemed to him the more incomprehensible, because the
girl must have needed a powerful character to resist the influence of
the evil examples she constantly had before her. Hence he had taken a
lively interest in her, and urged her to persevere in her good
sentiments. He had let her see that one day God would reward her by
removing her from the perverse medium in which fate had cast her, to
restore her to that great human family of which she was ignorant.

When the two women were seated at his side, the missionary gave them, in
his gentle, sympathising way, a paternal admonition to support with
patience and resignation the tribulations Heaven sent on them; then he
begged Ellen to tell him in detail all that had occurred in the prairie
since his departure for France. The girl's narrative was long and sad,
and frequently interrupted by tears which she could not repress.
Valentine's mother shuddered on hearing things so extraordinary to her
described; heavy tears ran down her wrinkled cheek, and she crossed
herself, muttering compassionately--

"Poor child! What a horrible life."

For, in truth Ellen was describing, her life; she had witnessed and
suffered from all these terrors, all these atrocities, whose sinister
and bloody images she unrolled before her hearers. When the story was
ended she buried her face in her hands and wept silently, crushed by the
revival of such poignant sorrows and the re-opening of still bleeding
wounds. The missionary gave her a long look, stamped with gentle pity.
He took her hand, pressed it, and bending over her, said with an accent
of kindness which went straight to her heart--

"Weep, poor girl, for you have suffered terribly; weep, but be strong;
God, who tries you, doubtless reserves for you other blows more terrible
than those which have fallen on you; do not try to repulse the cup which
is brought to your lips; the more you suffer in this life, the more
happy and glorified you will be in another. If God chastise you, a poor
stainless lamb, it is because He loves you; happy those whom He thus
chastises! Derive your strength from prayer, for that elevates the soul,
and renders it better; do not yield to despair, for that is a suggestion
of the demon who renders man rebellious to the teaching of Providence.
Think of your divine Master, remember all He suffered for us; thus you
will recognise how little your sorrows are when compared with His, and
you will hope; for Providence is not blind; when it weighs heavily on a
creature, it is preparing to reward her a hundredfold for past
sufferings."

"Alas, father," Ellen replied, sorrowfully, "I am only a miserable
child, without strength or courage; the burden laid on me is very heavy;
still, if it be the will of the Lord that it should be so, may His holy
name be blessed! I will try to stifle the feelings of revolt which are
at times a wound in my heart, and struggle without complaining against
the fate that overwhelms me."

"Good, my sister, good," the priest said; "the great God, who searches
all hearts, will have pity on you."

He then made her rise, and led her a short distance to a spot where a
bed of dry leaves had been prepared by his care.

"Try and sleep, my child," he said; "fatigue is crushing you; a few
hours' rest is indispensable for you."

"I will strive to obey you, father."

"May the angels watch over your slumbers, my child," the priest replied;
"and may the Almighty bless you, as I do."

Then he returned slowly and thoughtfully to Valentine's mother. There
was a long silence, during which the missionary reflected deeply; at
length he said--

"Madam, you have heard this poor girl's narrative; her father was
wounded when fighting with your son. Valentine, I feel assured, is not
far from us; still, the man we have saved claims all our care, and we
must watch that he does not fall into the hands of his enemies, I
therefore ask you to delay awhile in rejoining your son, for Red Cedar
must be placed in safety. Above all, I implore you to maintain the
deepest silence as to the events of which you have been and will be a
witness. Forgive me, but I implore you to delay the time of your
meeting."

"Father," she said, spontaneously, "for ten years, without despairing
for a day or a moment, I have been patiently awaiting the hour which
will rejoin me to my beloved son. Now that I am certain of seeing him
again, that no doubt as to his existence dwells in my heart, I can wait
a few days longer. I should be ungrateful to God and to you, who have
done so much for me, if I insisted on the contrary course. Act as your
charity and your devotion impel you to do; fulfil your duty without
troubling yourself about me; God has willed it that we should come
across this man. The ways of Providence are often incomprehensible; obey
it by saving him, however unworthy he may be of pardon."

"I expected your answer: still, I am pleased to see that you confirm me
in what I intend to do."

The next morning, at daybreak, they started again, after saying prayers
together, according to the custom established by the missionary. Red
Cedar was still in the same state of prostration, and the two following
days passed without any incident worthy of recording. At the evening of
the third day they entered the defile, in the centre of which, on one of
the mountain sides facing it; the cavern was. Red Cedar was carried up
to it cautiously, and placed in one of the distant compartments, far
from all external sounds, and so as to be concealed from the sight of
any strangers whom accident might lead to the cavern while he was in it.

It was with a feeling of indescribable joy that Valentine's mother
entered the grotto which served as an abode to that son whom she had
been so long afraid she should never see again, and her emotion was
extreme on finding a few valueless articles used by Valentine. The
worthy woman, so truly a mother, shut herself up alone in the
compartment which the hunter had made his sleeping room, and there, face
to face with her reminiscences; she remained for several hours absorbed
in herself.

The missionary pointed to each the room they would occupy; he left his
comrades to their repose, and sat down by the side of the wounded man,
where Ellen already was installed as nurse.

"Why do you not sleep, my child?" he asked her.

Ellen pointed to the sufferer with a gesture full of nobility.

"Let me watch over him," she said; "he is my father."

The missionary smiled softly and withdrew. At daybreak he returned. Red
Cedar, on hearing him come, gave vent to a sigh, and rose with
difficulty on his bed.

"How are you, brother?" the missionary asked, in his gentle voice.

A febrile flush covered the bandit's face, a cold perspiration beaded on
his temples, his eyes flashed, and he said in a low voice, broken by the
extreme emotion that oppressed him--

"Father, I am a wretch unworthy of your pity."

"My son," the priest answered gently, "you are a poor straying creature,
on whom I doubt not God will have pity, if your repentance be sincere."

Red Cedar let his eyes sink; a convulsive movement agitated his limbs.

"Father," he muttered, "would you teach me how to make the sign of the
cross?"

At this strange request in the mouth of such a man, Father Seraphin
clasped his hands fervently, and raised his eyes to Heaven with an
expression of sublime gratitude. Was the evil angel defeated? Or was it
a farce played by this perverse man to deceive his saviour, and by these
means escape the numerous enemies that sought his death?

Alas! Man is so extraordinary a composite of good and evil, that perhaps
at this moment, and in spite of himself, Red Cedar was acting in good
faith.




CHAPTER XIV.

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE OF THE READER.


After the fight, when Black Cat's Apaches had retired on one side, and
Unicorn's Comanches on the other, each detachment proceeding in the
direction of the village, and the hunters were alone on the prairie,
Valentine perceived White Gazelle leaning pensively against a tree, and
absently holding the bridle of her horse, which was nibbling the grass.
The hunter understood that he and his comrades owed a reparation to this
girl, whose incomprehensible devotion had been so useful to them during
the moving incidents of the tragedy which had just ended. He therefore
went up to her, and bowing courteously, said in a gentle voice--

"Why remain thus aloof? Your place is by our side; hobble your horse
with ours, and come to our fireside."

White Gazelle blushed with pleasure at Valentine's words, but after a
moment's reflection, she shook her head, and gave him a sorrowful look,
as she said:

"Thanks, caballero, for the offer you deign to make me, but I cannot
accept it; if you and your friends are generous enough to forget all
that there was reprehensible in my conduct towards you, my memory is
less complaisant; I must, I will requite by other services more
effectual than those I have rendered you today, the faults I have
committed."

"Madam," the hunter replied, "the feelings you express do you only more
harm in our eyes; hence do not refuse our invitation. As you know, we
have no right to be very strict on the prairie; it is rare to meet
persons who repair so nobly as you have done any error they may commit."

"Do not press me, caballero, for my resolve is unchangeable," she said
with an effort, as she looked in the direction of Don Pablo. "I must
depart, leave you at once, so permit me to do so."

Valentine bowed.

"Your wish is to me an order," he said; "you are free; I only desired to
express my gratitude to you."

"Alas! We have done nothing as yet, since our most cruel enemy, Red
Cedar, has escaped."

"What?" the hunter asked in astonishment; "is Red Cedar your enemy?"

"A mortal one," she said, with an expression of terrible hatred. "Oh! I
can understand that you, who have hitherto seen me aid him in his
designs, cannot conceive such a change. Listen: at the period when I
tried to serve that villain, I only believed him to be one of the
bandits so common in the Far West."

"While now?"

"Now," she went on, "I know something I was ignorant of then, and have
a terrible account to settle with him."

"Far from me be any wish to pry into your secrets; still, permit me to
make one observation."

"Pray do so."

"Red Cedar is no common enemy--one of those men who can be easily
overcome. You know that as well as I do, I think?"

"Yes, what then?"

"Would you hope to succeed in what men like myself and my friends, and
aided by numerous warriors, could not achieve?"

White Gazelle smiled.

"Perhaps so," she said; "I too have allies, and I will tell you who they
are, if you wish to know, caballero."

"Pray tell me, for really your calmness and confidence startle me."

"Thanks, caballero, for the interest you feel for me; the first ally on
whom I build is yourself."

"That is true," the hunter said with a bow; "if my feelings toward you
did not promote the alliance, my duty and self-interest would command
it. And can you tell me the name of the other?"

"Certainly, the more so as you know him: the other is Bloodson."

Valentine gave a start of surprise, which he immediately checked.

"Pardon me," he said politely; "but you really have the privilege of
surprising me inordinately."

"How so, caballero?"

"Because I fancied that Bloodson was one of your most bitter enemies."

"He was so," she said, with a smile.

"And now?"

"Now, he is my dearest friend."

"This goes beyond me. And when was this extraordinary change effected?"

"Since the day," the girl cleverly replied, "when Red Cedar, instead of
being my friend, suddenly became my enemy."

Valentine let his arms fall, like a man who gives up in despair
attempting to solve a riddle.

"I do not understand you," he said.

"You will soon do so," she answered.

She bounded into her saddle, and leaning over to Valentine said--

"Good bye, caballero; I am going to join Bloodson; we shall meet again
soon."

She dug her spurs into her horse's flanks, waved her hand once again,
and soon disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Valentine thoughtfully rejoined his friends.

"Well?" Don Miguel said.

"Well!" he replied, "that woman is the most extraordinary creature I
ever met."

On getting out of sight of the hunters, White Gazelle checked her horse,
and let it assume a pace better suited for those precautions every
traveller must take on the prairie. The girl was happy at this moment;
she had succeeded not only in saving the man she loved from a terrible
danger, but had also restored her character in Valentine's sight. Red
Cedar, it was true, had escaped; but this time the lesson had been rude,
and the bandit, everywhere tracked like a wild beast, must speedily fall
into the hands of those who had an interest in killing him.

She rode along carelessly, admiring the calmness of the prairie and the
play of the sunshine on the foliage. Never had the desert appeared to
her so glorious--never had greater tranquillity reigned in her mind. The
sun, now declining, exaggerated the shadow thrown by the tall trees; the
birds, hidden beneath the dense verdure, were singing their evening hymn
to the Almighty; when she fancied she saw a man half reclining on the
slope of one of those numberless ditches dug by the heavy winter rain.
This man, by whose side a horse was standing, was apparently absorbed in
an occupation which the girl could not understand, but which puzzled her
extremely. Although she rode up quickly, the individual did not put
himself out of the way, but calmly continued his incomprehensible task.

At length she was opposite him, and could not restrain a cry of
astonishment as she stopped to look at him. The man was playing alone at
_monte_ (the Mexican lansquenet) with a pack of greasy cards. This
appeared to her so extraordinary that she burst into a loud laugh, and
at the sound the man raised his head.

"Aha!" he said, not appearing at all surprised, "I felt certain someone
would arrive; that is infallible in this blessed land."

"Nonsense," the girl said, with a laugh; "do you believe it?"

"_Canarios!_ I am sure of it," the other answered; "and you are a proof
of it, since here you are."

"Explain yourself, my master, I beg, for I confess that I do not
understand you the least in the world."

"I thought so," the stranger said, with a toss of his head, "but for all
that, I stick to my assertion."

"Very well; but be good enough to explain yourself more clearly."

"Nothing is easier, señor caballero. I come from Jalapa, a town you must
know."

"Yes, through the medicinal productions that owe their name to it."

"Very good," the other said, with a laugh; "but that does not prevent
Jalapa being a very nice town."

"On the contrary; but go on."

"I will. You will be aware then that we have a proverb at Jalapa."

"May be so; in fact, there is nothing surprising about the fact."

"True again; but you do not know the proverb, eh?"

"No, I am waiting for you to quote it."

"Here it is; 'If you wish for your company, deal the cards.'"

"I do not understand."

"Why, nothing is easier, as you shall see."

"I wish for nothing better," the girl said, who was extraordinary amused
by this conversation.

The stranger rose, placed the cards in his pocket with the respect every
professional gambler shews to this operation, and, carelessly leaning on
the neck of the girl's horse, he said:

"Owing to reasons too long to narrate, I find myself alone, lost in this
immense prairie which I do not know, I an honest inhabitant of towns,
not at all conversant with the manners and habits of the desert, and
consequently exposed to die of hunger."

"Pardon me for interrupting you; I would merely observe that as we are
some three hundred miles from the nearest town, you, the civilised man,
must have been wandering about the desert for a considerable length of
time."

"That is true: what you say could not be more correct, comrade, but that
results from what I mentioned just now, and which would take too long to
tell you."

"Very good; go on."

"Well, finding myself lost, I remembered the proverb of my country, and
taking the cards from my _alforjas_, though I was alone, I began
playing, feeling certain that an adversary would soon arrive, not to
take a hand, but to get me out of my trouble."

White Gazelle suddenly reassumed her seriousness, and drew herself up in
her saddle.

"You have won the game," she said; "for, as you see, Don Andrés Garote,
I have come."

On hearing his name pronounced, the ranchero, for it was really our old
acquaintance, suddenly raised his head, and looked the speaker in the
face.

"Who are you, then," he said, "who know me so well, and yet I do not
remember ever having met you?"

"Come, come," the girl said with a laugh, "your memory is short, master:
what, do you not remember White Gazelle?"

At this name the ranchero started back.

"Oh, I am a fool: it is true; but I was so far from supposing--pardon
me, señorita."

"How is it," White Gazelle interrupted him, "that you have thus deserted
Red Cedar?"

"Caramba!" the ranchero exclaimed; "say that Red Cedar has deserted me;
but it is not that which troubles me; I have an old grudge against
another of my comrades."

"Ah?"

"Yes, and I should like to avenge myself, the more so, because I
believe that I have the means in my hands at this moment."

"And who is that friend?"

"You know him as well as I do, señorita?"

"That is possible; but, unless his name be a secret--"

"Oh, no," the ranchero quickly interrupted her, "the man I mean is Fray
Ambrosio."

The girl, at this name, began to take a great interest in the
conversation.

"Fray Ambrosio!" she said, "What charge have you to bring against that
worthy man?"

The ranchero looked the girl

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