THE TRAPPER'S DAUGHTER

Contents

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

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."

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.

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.

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 recal 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.

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 recal 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.

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.

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.

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.

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—

"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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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 in the face to see if she were speaking seriously; but White Gazelle's face was cold and stern; he tossed his head.

"It is an account between him and me," he said, "which heaven will decide."

"Very good; I ask for no explanation, but, as your affairs interest me very slightly, and I have important matters of my own to attend to, you will permit me to retire."

"Why so?" the ranchero asked quickly; "we are comfortable together, then why should we separate?"

"Because, in all probability, we are not going the same road."

"Who knows, Niña, whether we are not destined to travel in company since I have met you?"

"I am not of that opinion. I am about to join a man whom I fancy you would not at all like to meet face to face."

"I don't know, Niña," the ranchero answered, with considerable animation; "I want to revenge myself on that accursed monk called Fray Ambrosio; I am too weak to do so by myself, or, to speak more correctly, too great a coward."

"Very good," the girl exclaimed, with a smile; "then how will you manage that your vengeance does not slip from you?"

"Oh, very simply; I know a man in the desert who detests him mortally, and would give a great deal to have sufficient proofs against him, for, unfortunately, that man has the failing of being honest."

"Indeed."

"Yes, what would you have? No man is perfect."

"And who is this man?"

"Oh, you never heard of him, Niña."

"How do you know? At any rate you can tell me his name."

"As you please; he is called Bloodson."

"Bloodson?" she exclaimed, with a start of surprise.

"Yes—do you know him?"

"Slightly; but go on."

"That is all; I am looking for this man."

"And you have, you say, in your possession the means of destroying Fray Ambrosio?"

"I believe so."

"What makes you suppose it?"

The ranchero shrugged his shoulders significantly; White Gazelle gave him one of those profound glances which read the heart.

"Listen," she said to him, as she laid her hand on his shoulder; "I can help you to find the man you seek."

"Bloodson?"

"Yes."

"Are you speaking seriously?" the gambusino asked, with a start of surprise.

"I could not be more serious; still, I must be sure that your statement is true."

Andrés Garote looked at her.

"Do you also owe Fray Ambrosio a grudge?" he asked her.

"That does not concern you," she answered; "we are not talking of myself, but of you. Have you these proofs? Yes, or no."

"I have them."

"Truly?"

"On my honour."

"Follow me, then, and within two hours you shall see Bloodson."

The ranchero quivered, and a smile of joy lit up his bronzed countenance as he leaped on his horse.

"Let us be off," he said.

In the meanwhile, day had surrendered to night, the sun had long been set, and an immense number of stars studded the heavenly vault; the travellers rode on silently side by side.

"Shall we soon arrive?" Andrés Garote asked.

White Gazelle stretched out her arm in the direction they were following, and pointed at a light flashing a short distance off through the trees.

"There it is," she said.

Red Cedar recovered but slowly in spite of the constant attention shown him by Father Seraphin, Ellen, and the hunter's mother. The moral shock the bandit had received on finding himself face to face with the missionary had been too powerful not to have a serious effect on his constitution. Still, the squatter had not relapsed since the day when, on returning to life, he had humbly bowed before the man of God. Whether it was true repentance, or a part he played, he had persevered on this path, to the edification of the missionary and the two women, who never ceased to thank Heaven from their hearts for this change.

So soon as he could rise and take a few steps in the cavern, Father Seraphin, who constantly feared Valentine's arrival, asked him what his intentions were for the future, and what mode of life he proposed adopting.

"Father," the squatter answered, "henceforth I belong to you: whatever you counsel me, I will do; still, I would remind you that I am a species of savage, whose whole life has been spent in the desert. Of what use should I be in a town among people whose habits or characters I should not understand?"

"That is true," the priest said; "and then, without resources as you are, old and ignorant of any other labour than that of a wood ranger, you would only lead a miserable existence."

"That would prove no obstacle, father, were it an expiation for me; but I have too deeply offended ever to return among them; I must live and die in the desert, striving to requite, by an old age exempt from blame, the faults and crimes of a youth which I hold in horror."

"I approve your design, for it is good; grant me a few days for reflection, and I will find you the means to live as you propose."

The conversation broke off here, and a month elapsed ere the missionary made any further allusion to it. The squatter had always shown Ellen a certain coarse and rough friendship, perfectly harmonising with the coarseness and brutality of his character; but since he had been able to appreciate the girl's utter devotion, and the self-denial she had displayed for his sake, a species of revolution had taken place in him; a new feeling was awakened in his heart, and he began loving this charming creature with all the strength of his soul.

This brutal man suddenly grew softer at the sight of the girl; a flash of joy shot from his savage eyes, and his mouth, habituated to curses, opened gladly to utter gentle words. Frequently, when seated on the mounted slope, near the cavern, he talked with her for hours, taking an infinite delight in hearing the melodious sound of that voice whose charms he had hitherto been ignorant of.

Ellen, hiding her sorrows, feigned a delight which was far from her mind, not to sadden the man she regarded as her father, and who seemed so happy at seeing her by his side. Certainly, if anyone at this moment had an ascendency over the old pirate's mind, and could bring him back to the right path, it was Ellen. She knew it, and used the power she had acquired cleverly, to try and convert this man, who had only been a species of evil genius to humanity.

One morning, when Red Cedar, almost entirely cured of his wounds, was taking his accustomed walk, leaning on Ellen's arm, Father Seraphin, who had been absent for two days, stood before him.

"Ah, it is you, father," the squatter said on seeing him; "I was alarmed at your absence, and am glad to see you back."

"How are you?" the missionary asked.

"I should be quite well if I had entirely recovered my strength, but that will soon return."

"All the better; for if my absence was long, you were to some extent the cause of it."

"How so?" the squatter asked, curiously.

"You remember you expressed a desire some time back to live in the prairie?"

"I did."

"It appears to me very prudent on your part, and will enable you to escape the pursuit of your enemies."

"Believe me, father," Red Cedar said, gravely, "that I have no desire to escape those I have offended. If my death could recal the crimes of which I have been guilty, I would not hesitate to sacrifice my life to public justice."

"I am happy, my friend, to find you imbued with these good sentiments; but I believe that God, who in no case desires the death of a sinner, will be more satisfied to see you repair, by an exemplary life, as far as in your power, all the evil you have done."

"I belong to you, father; whatever you advise me will be an order to me, and I will obey it gladly. Since Providence has permitted me to meet you, I have understood the enormity of my crimes. Alas! I am not alone responsible for them: never having had any but evil examples before me, I did not know the difference between good and evil. I believed that all men were wicked, and only acted as I did because I considered I was legitimately defending myself."

"Now that your ear is open to the truth, your mind is beginning to understand the sublime precepts of the gospel. Your road is ready traced; henceforth you will only have to persevere in the path on which you have so freely entered."

"Alas!" the squatter muttered, with a sigh, "I am a creature so unworthy of pardon, that I fear the Almighty will not take pity on me."

"Those words are an insult to Deity," the priest said, severely; "however culpable a sinner may be, he must never despair of the divine clemency; does not the gospel say, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ten just men who have persevered?"

"Forgive me, father."

"Come," the missionary said, changing his tone, "let us return to the matter which brings me to you. I have had built for you, a few leagues from here, in a delicious situation, a jacal, in which you can live, with your daughter."

"How kind you are, father," the squatter said, warmly; "how much gratitude I owe you."

"Do not speak of that; I shall be sufficiently recompensed if I see you persevere in your repentance."

"Oh, father, believe that I detest and hold in horror my past life."

"I trust that it may ever be so. This jacal, to which I will take you so soon as you please, is situated in a position which renders it almost impossible to discover. I have supplied it with the articles requisite for your life; you will find there food to last several days, arms and gunpowder to defend you, if attacked by wild beasts, and to go hunting with; I have added nets, beaver traps—in a word, everything required by a hunter and trapper."

"Oh, how kind you are, father," Ellen said with tears of joy in her eyes.

"Nonsense, say nothing about that," the missionary remarked, gaily; "I have only done my duty. As a further security, and to avoid any possible indiscretion, I have not told the secret of your retreat to any one: the jacal was built by my own hands, without the assistance of a stranger. You can, therefore, feel certain that no one will trouble you in the hermitage."

"And when can I go to it, father?"

"Whenever you please; all is ready."

"Ah, if I did not fear appearing ungrateful, I would say I will go at once."

"Do you think you are strong enough to undertake a journey of fifteen leagues?"

"I feel extraordinarily strong at this moment, father."

"Come, then; for had you not made the proposition, I intended to do so."

"In that case, father, all is for the best; and you are not vexed to see me so anxious to leave you, father."

"Not at all, be assured."

While talking thus, the three persons had descended the mountainside, and reached the ravine, where horses were awaiting them, held by an Indian.

"In the desert," the missionary said, "it is almost impossible to do without horses, owing to the great distance one has to go; you will therefore oblige me by keeping these."

"It is too much, father, you really overwhelm me with kindness."

Father Seraphin shook his head.

"Understand me, Red Cedar," he said; "in all I do for you there is far more calculation than you suppose."

"Oh!" Red Cedar said.

"Calculation in a good action!" Ellen exclaimed, incredulously; "you must be jesting, father."

"No, my child, I speak seriously, and you will understand; I have tried to regulate your father's life so well, place him so thoroughly in a condition to become a brave and honest hunter, that it will be impossible for him to find the slightest pretext for returning to his old errors, and all the fault will attach to him if he does not persevere in the resolution he has formed of amendment."

"That is true," Red Cedar answered; "well, father, I thank you for this calculation, which makes me the happiest of men, and proves to me that you have confidence in me."

"Come, come, to horse!"

They started.

Red Cedar inhaled the air deliciously; he felt born again, he was once more free. The missionary examined him curiously, analysing the feelings which the squatter experienced, and trying to form some opinion of the future from what he saw. Red Cedar understood instinctively that he was watched by his comrade; hence, to deceive him as to his feelings, he burst out into a loud expression of his gratitude, part of which was certainly true, but which was too noisy not to be exaggerated. The missionary pretended to be taken in by this device, and talked pleasantly throughout the ride.

About six hours after leaving the cave, they reached the jacal. It was a pretty little hut of interlaced reeds, divided into several rooms, with a corral behind for the horses. Nothing was wanting; hidden in the bottom of a valley, very difficult to approach, it stood on the bank of a small stream that flowed into the Gila. In a word, the position of this wild abode was delightful, and nothing was more easy than to be perfectly happy in it.

When the travellers had dismounted, and led their horses into this corral, Father Seraphin went over the jacal with his two protégés. All was as he had stated; and if there was not much to increase comfort, at any rate everything strictly necessary had been provided. Ellen was delighted, and her father pretended, perhaps, to be more so than he really was. After spending an hour with them Father Seraphin took leave of the squatter and his daughter.

"Will you leave us, already, father?" Ellen said.

"I must, my child; you know that my time is not my own," he answered, as he leaped on his horse, which the squatter brought him.

"But I hope," Red Cedar said, "that your absence will not be long, and that you will remember this jacal, where two persons live who owe their all to you."

"I wish to leave you at liberty. If I visited you too frequently, you might see in that a species of inquisition, and that impression would annoy you; still I will come, do not doubt it."

"You can never come too often, father," they both said, as they kissed his hands.

"Farewell, be happy," the missionary said, tenderly; "you know where to find me, if you have need of consolation or help. Come to me, and I shall be ever ready to help you to the extent of my ability: little though I can do, God, I feel convinced, will bless my efforts. Farewell."

After uttering these words, the missionary set spurs to his horse, and trotted away.

Red Cedar and his daughter looked after him so long as they could see him, and when he disappeared in the chaparral, on the other side of the stream, they gave vent to a sigh, and entered the jacal.

"Worthy and holy man!" the squatter muttered, as he fell into a butaca. "Oh! I will not crush the hopes he has built on my conversion!"

At this moment Red Cedar was not playing a farce.

Red Cedar accustomed himself more easily than his daughter thought possible, to the life prepared for him. After all, no change had taken place in his existence; with the exception of the mode of procedure, it was still the same labour, that is to say, a desert life in all its splendid liberty; hunting and fishing, while Ellen remained at home to attend to household duties. At night, however, before retiring to rest, the girl read her father a chapter from a Bible Father Seraphin had given her. The squatter, with his elbow on the table, and a pipe in his mouth, listened to her with an attention that surprised himself, and which each day only increased.

It was an exquisite picture presented in this obscure nook of the great American desert, amid this grand scenery, in this wretched hut, which the slightest breath of wind caused to tremble, by this athletic old man, with his energetic and stern features, listening to this palefaced and delicate girl, whose fine features and shadowy outline formed so strong a contrast with those of her hearer.

It was the same life every day; the squatter was happy, or, at least, fancied himself so; like all men whose life has been but one long drama, and who are made for action, recollections held but little place in him; he forgot, and fancied himself forgotten.

Ellen suffered, for she was unhappy; this existence, with no outlet and no future, was full of disenchantment for her, as it condemned her to renounce for ever that supreme blessing of every human creature, hope. Still, through fear of afflicting her father, she carefully shut up in her heart her sorrow, and only displayed a smiling face in his presence. Red Cedar yielded more and more to the charms of a life which was pleasant to him. If, at times, the recollection of his sons troubled the repose in which he lived, he looked at his daughter, and the sight of the angel he possessed, and who had devoted herself to his happiness, drove any other thoughts far away.

In the meanwhile, Father Seraphin visited the tenants of the jacal several times; and if satisfied with the resignation with which the squatter accepted his new position, the dull sorrow that undermined the maiden had not escaped his clear-sighted glance. His experience of the world told him that a girl of Ellen's age could not thus spend her fairest years in solitude, without contact with society. Unfortunately, a remedy was difficult, if not impossible, to find; the good missionary did not deceive himself on this point, and understood that all the consolations he lavished on the maiden, were thrown away, and that nothing could effectually combat the listlessness into which she had fallen.

As always happens in such cases, Red Cedar did not in the slightest degree suspect his daughter's grief; she was gentle, affectionate, attentive to him; he profited by it all, finding himself perfectly happy, and in his egotism, not seeing further. The days slipped away, each resembling the other; in the meanwhile, the winter came on, game became rarer, and Red Cedar's absences from home grew longer. Around the tops of the mountains were collected the grayish clouds, which daily descended lower, and would eventually burst over the prairie in the shape of rain and snow.

Winter is a terrible season in the Far West: all scourges combine to assail the unhappy man whom his evil destiny has cast into these disinherited countries without the means to brave their frightful climate, and, victim to his want of foresight, he presently dies of hunger and misery, after enduring inconceivable tortures. Red Cedar knew the Far West too long and too thoroughly not to perceive the arrival of this season with a species of terror; hence he sought, by all possible means, to procure the necessary provisions and indispensable furs.

Rising at daybreak, he galloped over the prairie, exploring it in every direction, and not returning home till night compelled him to give up the chase. But, as we have said, game was becoming more and more rare, and consequently his journeys longer.

One morning Red Cedar rose earlier than usual, left the jacal noiselessly for fear of waking his daughter, saddled his horse, and started at a gallop. He had found, on the previous evening, the trail of a magnificent black bear, which he had followed to within a short distance of the cave to which it retired, and he intended to attack it in its lair. To do that, he must make haste, for the bear is not like other wild beasts: it seeks its food during the day, and generally leaves its abode at an early hour. The squatter, perfectly acquainted with the animal's habits, had therefore taken up the trail as soon as he could.

The sun had not yet risen; the sky of a dark blue, was only just beginning to assume on the extreme verge of the horizon those opaline tints which presently turn into pink, and are the precursors of sunrise. The day promised to be splendid: a light breeze slightly bowed the leafy summits of the trees, and scarce wrinkled the little stream whose bank the squatter was following. A light fog rose from the ground, impregnated with those sharp odours which expand the chest so gloriously. The birds woke one after the other beneath the leaves, and softly produced the melodious concert they perform each morning to salute the re-awakening of nature. By degrees the darkness was effaced, the sun rose brilliantly on the horizon, and the day broke splendidly.

Red Cedar, on reaching the entrance of a narrow gorge, at the end of which was the bear's den, in the midst of a chaos of rocks, stopped a few minutes to regain breath, and make his final preparations. He dismounted, hobbled his horse, and gave it its forage, then, after assuring himself that his knife played easily in the sheath, and his rifle was in good order, he entered the defile.

The squatter walked in with outstretched neck, and eye and ear on the watch, when suddenly a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a hoarse laugh smote his ear. He turned with surprise, but this surprise was converted into terror at the sight of the man who, standing before him with arms folded on his chest, was regarding him with a look of mockery.

"Fray Ambrosio!" he exclaimed, as he fell back a step.

"Halloh, gossip," the latter said; "on my soul, you must be hard of hearing: I called you a dozen times, and you did not deign to answer me. Satanas! I was obliged to touch you before you would see that somebody wanted you."

"What is your business with me?" the squatter asked in an icy tone.

"What I want, gossip? That's a strange question: don't you know it as well as I do?"

"I do not understand you," Red Cedar said, still perfectly calm; "so explain yourself, if you please."

"I will do so, my master," the monk answered, with a mocking smile.

"But make haste, for I warn you that I am in a hurry."

"Can it be possible! Well, I have plenty of time, so you must find some to listen to me."

The squatter gave a passionate start, which he, however, immediately checked.

"Yes, it is so," the monk said coolly; "I have been looking for you a long time."

"Come, a truce to talking! Here I am, explain yourself in two words. I say again, I am in a hurry."

"And I repeat that I do not care if you are. Oh! You may frown, gossip, but you must listen to me."

Red Cedar stamped his foot angrily, taking one step to the monk, he laid his hand on his shoulder, and looked fiercely in his face.

"Why, master," he said in a short, harsh voice, "I fancy, on my side, that we are changing parts, and that you treat me very curtly; take care, I am not patient, as you know, and if you do not mind, my patience might soon fail me."

"That is possible," the monk answered impudently; "but if we have changed our parts, whose fault is it, pray, mine or yours? Your sons are right in saying that you have turned monk, and are no longer fit for anything."

"Villain!" the squatter shouted, and raising his hand—

"That will do! Insults now! Don't be bashful: I like you better that way, at least I recognise you. Hum! what a change! I must confess that those French missionaries are real sorcerers: what a misfortune that since the independence the inquisition no longer exists!"

Red Cedar looked at the monk, who fixed on him his fierce eye with a diabolical expression; the squatter was suffering from one of those bursts of cold passion, which are the more terrible, because they are concentrated. He felt an extraordinary itching to crush the scoundrel who was mocking him, and made impotent efforts to repress the anger which was beginning to get the mastery of him. The monk was not so much at his ease as he pretended to be. He saw the squatter's frown grow deeper, his face become livid; all this foreboded a storm which he was not anxious to see burst to his presence.

"Come," he said, in a softer key, "why should old friends quarrel? Con mil demonios—I am only here with a good intent, and to do you a service."

The squatter laughed contemptuously.

"You do not believe me," the monk continued, with an air of beatitude; "that does not surprise me, it is always so. Good intentions are misunderstood, and a man believes his enemies in preference to his friends."

"A truce to your nonsense," the squatter said, impatiently; "I have listened to you too long already; let me pass, and you can go to the devil."

"Thanks for the proposition you make me," the monk said with a laugh; "but if you have no objection, I will not take advantage of it, at least for the present. But, jesting apart, there are two persons close by anxious to see you, and whom I am sure you will be delighted to meet."

"Whom do you mean? I suppose they are rogues of your own sort."

"Probably," the monk said; "however you shall judge for yourself, gossip."

And, not waiting for the squatter's answer, the monk imitated thrice the hiss of the coral snake. At the third time a slight movement took place in the shrubs a short distance off, and two men leaped into the defile. The squatter uttered a cry of surprise, almost of terror, on seeing them: he had recognised his two sons, Nathan and Sutter. The young men walked up quickly to their father, whom they saluted with a respect mingled with irony, which did not escape his notice.

"Ah, there you are, father," Sutter, said, roughly, as he banged the butt of his rifle on the ground, and rested his hands on the muzzle; "a man has a hard run before he can catch you up."

"It seems that since our separation father has turned Quaker; his new religion, probably, orders him not to frequent such bad company as ours."

"Silence, you villains!" the squatter shouted, stamping his foot; "I do what I please, and no one that I know of has a right to interfere."

"You are mistaken, father," Sutter, said drily; "I, for instance, consider your conduct unworthy of a man."

"Not mentioning," the monk supported him, "that you place your confederates in a fix, which is not right."

"That is not the question," Nathan said; "if father likes to turn Puritan, that is his business, and I will not find, fault with him; but there is a time for everything. To my mind, when a man is surrounded by enemies and tracked like a wild beast, he ought not to put on a sheepskin, and pretend to be harmless."

"What do you mean?" the squatter asked impatiently; "Explain yourself, once for all, and let us make an end of this."

"I will do so," Nathan went on; "while you are sleeping in a deceitful security, your enemies are watching and constantly weaving the web in which they have hopes of enfolding you shortly. Do you fancy that we have not known your retreat for a long time? Who can hope to escape discovery in the desert? We did not wish, however, to disturb your repose till the moment arrived for doing so, and that is why you did not see us before today."

"Yes," the monk remarked; "but at present time presses: while you trust to the fine words of the French missionary, who cured you and lulls you to sleep, in order always to keep you under his thumb, your enemies are silently preparing to attack you, and finish with you once for all."

The squatter gave a start of amazement.

"Why, that man saved my life," he said.

The three men burst into a laugh.

"What use is experience?" the monk said, turning to the young men with a significant shrug of his shoulders. "Here is your father, a man whose whole life has been spent in the desert, who forgets at once its most sacred law, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and will not understand that this man, who, he says, saved his life, merely cured him to torture him at a later date, and have the pleasure of depriving him of that life when he is in rude health, instead of the miserable amount left him when they met."

"Oh, no," the squatter shouted, "you lie! That is impossible!"

"That is impossible!" the monk replied, with pity; "Oh, how blind men are! Come, reflect, gossip; had not this priest an insult to avenge?"

"It is true," Red Cedar muttered with a sigh; "but he forgave me."

"Forgave you! Do you ever forgive anybody? Nonsense, you are mad, gossip! I see there is nothing to be got out of you. Do what you like—we leave you."

"Yes," said the squatter, "leave me; there is nothing I wish more."

The monk and his comrades went away a few paces, but Fray Ambrosio suddenly returned. Red Cedar was still standing at the same spot with hanging head and frowning brow. The monk saw the squatter was shaken, and the moment had arrived to deal the great blow.

"Gossip," he said, "a parting word, or, if you prefer, a last piece of advice."

"What is there now?" Red Cedar said, nervously.

"Watch over Ellen!"

"What!" the squatter yelled, as he bounded like a panther and seized Fray Ambrosio by the arm, "What did you say, monk?"

"I said," the other replied, in a firm and marked voice, "that your enemies wish to punish you through Ellen, and that if that accursed monk has hitherto appeared to protect you, it was because he feared lest the victim he covets might escape him."

At these fearful words, a horrible change took place in Red Cedar; a livid pallor covered his face, his body was agitated by a convulsive quivering.

"Oh!" he shouted with the roar of a tiger, "let them come, then!"

The monk gave, his comrades a triumphant glance; he had succeeded, and held his palpitating prey in his hands.

"Come," Red Cedar continued, "do not desert me; we will crush this herd of vipers. Ah, they fancy they have me," he added, with a nervous laugh; that almost choked him, "but I will show them that the old lion is not conquered yet. I can count on you, my lads, and on you, Fray Ambrosio?"

"We are your only friends," the monk replied, "as you know perfectly well."

"That is true," he went on; "forgive me for having forgotten it for a moment. Ah, you shall see."

Two hours later the three men reached the jacal, and on seeing them enter, Ellen felt a shudder of terror run over her; a secret foreboding warned her of misfortune.

So soon as Father Seraphin had installed Red Cedar and Ellen in the jacal, and assured himself that the new life he had procured them was supportable, he thought about keeping his promise to Valentine's mother.

The worthy female, in spite of all her courage and resignation, felt her strength daily growing less; she said nothing, she did not complain; but the certainty of being so near her son and yet unable to see him, to press him in her arms after such a lengthened separation, such cruel alternations of cheated hopes and frightful deceptions plunged her into a gloomy melancholy from which nothing could draw her; she felt herself dying by inches, and had arrived at the terrible point of believing that she would never see her son again, for he was dead, and that the missionary, through fear of dealing her a terrible blow, deceived her with a hope which could never be realised. Maternal love does not reason.

All that Father Seraphin had told her to cause her to be patient had only lulled her grief for a while, till it broke out again in redoubled impatience and anxiety. All she had seen and heard since her landing in America had only increased her anxiety, by showing her how life in this country often only hangs by a thread. Hence, when the missionary informed her that in a week at the latest she should embrace her son, her joy and anxiety were so great that she almost fainted.

At first, she did not believe in such happiness. Through hoping against hope so long, she had reached such a state of distrust that she supposed that the good priest only told her this to make her patient for a while longer, and that he promised this meeting just as hopeless sick people are promised things which can never be realised.

In the meanwhile, Father Seraphin, though certain that Valentine was at this moment on the prairie, did not know where to lay his hand on him. So soon as he reached the grotto he inhabited provisionally, he sent off the Indians in four different directions to obtain information and bring him positive news of the hunter. Valentine's mother was present when the missionary despatched these couriers; she heard the instructions he gave them, saw them start, and then began counting the minutes till their return, calculating in her mind the time they would employ in finding her son and in returning: the incidents that might delay them; in short, making those countless suppositions to which people give way who are impatiently awaiting anything they eagerly desire.

Two days elapsed, and none of the couriers returned; the poor mother, seated on a rock, with her eyes fixed on the plain, awaited them, motionless and indefatigable. At the close of the third day, she perceived, at a great distance, a black point, rapidly approaching the spot where she was; gradually, it became more distinct, and she recognised a horseman galloping at full speed up the valley.

The mother's heart beat as if ready to burst. It was evidently one of the missionary's messengers; but what news did he bring? At length, the Indian dismounted, and began scaling the hill side; the old woman seemed to regain her youthful limbs, so rapidly did she go to meet him, and cleared in a few minutes the space that separated them. But when they were face to face, another obstacle rose before her: the redskin did not understand a word of French; she, for her part, could not speak Indian. But mothers have a species of language, a freemasonry of the heart, which is understood in all countries; the Comanche warrior stopped before her, folded his arms on his chest, and bowed with a gentle smile, merely uttering the word—

"Koutonepi!"

Valentine's mother knew that the Indians were accustomed to call her son thus; and she suddenly felt reassured by the man's smile, and the way in which he had spoken her son's name. She took the warrior by the arm, and dragged him to the grotto, at the entrance of which Father Seraphin was reading his breviary.

"Well!" he asked on seeing her, "What news?"

"This man could tell me nothing," she replied, "for I do not understand his language; but something assures me he brings good news."

"With your leave, I will question him."

"Do so, for I am anxious to know what I have to expect."

The missionary turned to the Indian, who stood motionless a few yards off, and had listened to the few words spoken.

"The brow of my brother, the Spider, is damp," he said; "let him take a place by my side and rest: he has had a long journey."

The Indian smiled gravely, and bowed respectfully to the missionary.

"The Spider is a chief in his tribe," he said in his guttural and yet melodious voice; "he can bound like the jaguar, and crawl like the serpent: nothing fatigues him."

"I know that my brother is a great warrior," the missionary answered: "his exploits are numerous, and the Apaches fly on seeing him. Has my brother met the young men of his tribe?"

"Spider has met them: they are hunting the buffalo on the Gila."

"Was their great chief Unicorn with them?"

"Unicorn was with his warriors."

"Good! My brother has the eye of a tiger-cat: nothing escapes him. Did he meet the great paleface hunter?"

"Spider smoked the calumet with Koutonepi and several warriors, friends of the pale hunter, assembled round his fire."

"Did my brother speak with Koutonepi?" the priest asked.

"Yes, Koutonepi is glad at the return of the father of prayer, whom he did not hope to see again. When the walkon has sung for the second time, Koutonepi will be near my father with his comrades."

"My brother is a wise and skillful warrior: I thank him for the way in which he has carried out the mission with which he was entrusted, a mission which no other warrior would have performed with so much prudence and tact."

At this well-dressed compliment, a smile of joy and pride played round the Indian's lips, who withdrew after respectfully kissing the missionary's hand. Father Seraphin then turned to Madame Guillois, who anxiously awaited the result of this conversation, trying to read in the priest's looks what she had to hope or fear. He took her hand, pressed it gently, and said to her with that sympathetic accent which he possessed in the highest degree—

"Your son is coming, you will soon see him: he will be here this night, within two hours at the most."

"Oh!" she said with an accent impossible to render; "God! Be blessed!"

And, kneeling on the ground, she burst into tears. The missionary watched her anxiously, ready to help her if her extreme emotion caused her to break down. After a few moments she rose smiling through her tears, and took her place again by the priest's side.

"Oh!" she said eagerly, "he is my son, the only being I ever loved; the child I nursed at my breast, and I am going to see him again! Alas! We have been separated for ten years—for ten years the mark of my kisses has been effaced from his forehead. You cannot understand what I feel, father—it cannot be explained; to a mother her child is everything."

"Do not let your emotion overpower you."

"Then, he is coming?" she repeated eagerly.

"In two hours at the most."

"What a long time two hours are!" she said with a sigh.

"Oh! all human creatures are like that," the missionary exclaimed. "You, who waited so many years without complaining, now find two hours too long."

"But I am waiting for my son, my beloved child; I cannot see him soon enough."

"Come, calm yourself, you are quite in a fever."

"Oh! fear nothing, father, joy never kills. The sight of my son will restore my health, I feel sure."

"Poor mother!" the priest could not refrain from saying.

"Am I not?" she said. "Oh, it is a terrible thing, if you but knew it, to live in these continued horrors, to have only a son who is your joy, your delight, and not to know where he is, or what he is doing, whether he is dead or alive. The most cruel torture for a mother is this continual uncertainty of good and evil, of hope and disappointment. You do not understand this, you can never understand it, you men; it is a sense wanting in you, and which we mothers alone possess—love of our children."

There was a short silence, then she went on:

"Good heaven! How slowly time passes. Will not the sun soon set? Which way do you think my son will come, father? I should like to see him arrive, though I have not seen him for a long time. I feel certain that I shall recognise him at once; a mother is not mistaken, look you, for she does not see her child with her eyes, but feels him in her eyes."

The missionary led her to the entrance of the cave, made her sit down, placed himself by her side, and said, as he stretched out his arm in a southwestern direction:

"Look over there, he must come that way."

"Thanks!" she said, eagerly. "Oh, you are as kind as you are virtuous. You are good as a saint, father. God will reward you, but I can only offer you my thanks."

The missionary smiled softly.

"I am happy," he said, simply.

They looked out, the sun was rapidly sinking in the horizon; gloom gradually covered the ground; objects were confused, and it was impossible to distinguish anything, even at a short distance.

"Let us go in," Father Seraphin said; "the night chill might strike you."

"Nonsense," she said, "I feel nothing."

"Besides," he went on, "the gloom is so dense that you cannot see him."

"That is true," she said, fervently, "but I shall hear him."

There was no reply possible to this. Father Seraphin took his seat again by her side.

"Forgive me, father," she said, "but joy renders me mad."

"You have suffered enough, poor mother," he answered, kindly, "to have the right of enjoying unmingled happiness this day. Do what you please, then, and have no fear of causing me pain."

About an hour elapsed ere another word was uttered by them: they were listening; the night was becoming more gloomy, the desert sounds more imposing, the evening breeze had risen, and groaned hoarsely through the quebradas, with a melancholy and prolonged sound. Suddenly Madame Guillois sprang up with flashing eye, and seized the missionary's hand.

"Here he is," she said, hoarsely.

Father Seraphin raised his head.

"I hear nothing," he replied.

"Ah!" the mother said, with an accent that came from her heart, "I am not mistaken—it is he! Listen, listen again."

Father Seraphin listened with greater attention, and, in fact, a scarcely perceptible sound could be heard on the prairie, resembling the prolonging roaring of distant thunder. The noise became gradually louder, and it was presently easy to distinguish the gallop of several horses coming up at full speed.

"Well," she exclaimed, "was it fancy? Oh! A mother's heart is never mistaken."

"You are right, madam; in a few minutes he will be by your side."

"Yes," she muttered, in a panting voice.

That was all she could say—joy was stifling her.

"In Heaven's name," the missionary exclaimed, in alarm, "take care! This emotion is too great for you; you are killing yourself."

She shook her head with a careless gesture, full of inexpressible happiness.

"What matter?" she said; "I am happy—oh, very happy at this moment."

The horsemen entered the defile, and the gallop of their horses grew very loud.

"Dismount, gentlemen," a powerful voice shouted, "we have arrived."

"'Tis he! 'Tis he!" she said, with a movement as if going to rush forward; "it was he who spoke—I recognised his voice."

The missionary held her in his arms.

"What are you about?" he exclaimed, "you will kill yourself!"

"Pardon me, father, pardon me! But on hearing him speak, I know not what emotion I felt; I was no longer mistress of myself, but rushed forward."

"A little patience, he is coming up; in five minutes he will be in your arms."

She started back hurriedly.

"No," she said, "not so, not so, the recognition would be too hurried; let me enjoy my happiness without losing a morsel. I wish him to find me out as I did him."

And she hurriedly dragged Father Seraphin into the grotto.

"It is Heaven that inspires you," he said; "yes, this recognition would be too abrupt—it would kill you both."

"I was right, father, was I not? Oh, you will see—you will see. Hide me at some spot where I can see and hear everything unnoticed; make haste, here he is."

The cavern, as we have said, was divided into a number of cells, each communicating with the other; Father Seraphin concealed Madame Guillois in one of these, whose walls were formed of stalactites, that had assumed the strangest forms. After hobbling their horse, the hunters climbed the mountain. While coming up, they could be heard talking together; the sound of their voices distinctly reached the inhabitants of the grotto, who listened greedily to the words they uttered.

"That poor Father Seraphin," Valentine said; "I do not know if you are like myself, caballeros, but I am delighted at seeing him again. I feared lest he had left us forever."

"It is a great consolation for me in my grief," said Don Miguel, "to know him so near us; that man is a true apostle."

"What is the matter, Valentine?" General Ibañez suddenly asked; "Why do you stop?"

"I do not know," the latter replied, in a hesitating voice, "something is taking place in me which I cannot explain. When Spider told me today of the father's arrival, I felt a strange contraction of the heart; now it is affecting me again, though I cannot say for what reason."

"My friend, it is the joy you feel at seeing Father Seraphin again, that is all."

The hunter shook his head.

"No," he said, "it is not that, but something else; what I feel is not natural: my chest is oppressed, I am choking, what can be happening?"

His friends anxiously collected round him.

"Let me go on," he said, resolutely; "if I have bad news to hear, it is better to do so at once."

And, in spite of the exhortations of his friends, who were alarmed at seeing him in this state, he began running up the mountain side. He soon reached the platform, when he stopped to take breath.

"Come on!" he said.

He boldly entered the cavern, followed by his friends, but at the moment he went in, he heard his name called; at the sound of this voice the hunter started; he turned pale and trembled, and a cold perspiration covered his face.

"Oh," he murmured, "who calls me thus?"

"Valentine! Valentine!" the soft voice repeated.

The hunter hesitated and bent his body forward, his face assumed an indescribable look of joy and alarm.

"Again! Again!" he said, in an indistinct voice, as he laid his hand on his heart to check its beating.

"Valentine!" the voice repeated. This time Valentine bounded forward like a lion.

"My mother!" he cried; "My mother, here I am!"

"Ah, I felt certain he would recognise me," she exclaimed, as she rushed into his arms.

The hunter pressed her to his bosom with a sort of frenzy; the poor woman lavished her caresses on him, crying and half mad with joy and terror at seeing him in this state. She repeated the experiment she had made. He kissed her face, with her white locks, unable to utter a word. At length a hoarse groan burst from his chest, he breathed faintly, and he melted into tears, saying, in an accent of indescribable tenderness—

"My mother! Oh, my mother!"

These were the only words he could find. Valentine laughed and wept at once; as he sat on a rock, holding his mother on his knees, he embraced her with delirious joy, and was never wearied of kissing her white hair, her pale cheeks, and her eyes, which had shed so many tears.

The spectators of the scene, affected by this true and simple affection, wept silently round the mother and son. Curumilla, crouched in a corner of the cave, was looking fixedly at the hunter, while two tears slowly glided down his bronzed cheeks.

When the first emotion was slightly calmed, Father Seraphin, who had till then kept aloof, not to trouble the glorious outpourings of this interview, stepped forward, and said in a gently imperious voice, as he held up the simple copper crucifix in his right hand:

"My children, let us return thanks to the Saviour for His infinite goodness."

The backwoodsmen knelt down and prayed.

A man must have lived a long time apart from beings he loves, separated from them by immeasurable distances, without hope of ever seeing them again, in order to understand the sweet and yet painful emotions Valentine experienced on seeing his mother again. We, the greater part of whose life has been spent in the deserts of the New World, amid the savage hordes that occupy them, speaking languages having no affinity with our own, forced into habits not at all agreeing with those of our country—we can remember the tender feelings that assailed us whenever a straying traveller uttered in our presence that sacred name of France so dear to our heart.

Exile is worse than death; it is an ever bleeding wound, which time, in lieu of cicatrising, only increases every hour, every minute, and changes at length into such a craving to breathe one's native air, were it only for a day, that exile contracts that terrible and incurable disease to which physicians give the name of nostalgia. The moment comes when a man, remote from his country, feels an invincible desire to see his country again, and hear his language again; neither fortune nor honours can contend against the feeling.

Valentine, during the many years he had spent in traversing the desert, had always had this memory of his country present to his mind. During his conversations with Father Seraphin he had spoken to him of his mother, that good and holy woman whom he never hoped to see again, for he had given up all thoughts of returning home for a long time past. The feverish existence of the desert had so seduced him, that every other consideration yielded to it, especially after the misfortunes of his early youth and the wounds of his only love. When, therefore, he saw himself reunited to his mother, and understood they would never separate again, an immense joy occupied his mind.

The entire night passed away like an hour, in delicious conversation; the hunters collected round the fire, listened to mother and son describing with that accent that comes from the heart the various incidents of their life during the long conversation. A few minutes before sunrise; Valentine insisted on his mother taking rest; he feared lest, at her advanced age, after the piercing emotions of such a day, such a lengthened absence of sleep might injure her health. After various objections, Madame Guillois at length yielded to her son's wishes, and retired to a remote compartment of the grotto.

When Valentine supposed his mother asleep, he made his friends a sign to sit down near him; the latter, suspecting that he had a serious communication to make to them, silently obeyed. Valentine walked up and down the cavern with his hands behind his back and frowning brow.

"Caballeros," he said, in a stern voice, "day is about to break, it is too late for any of us to think about sleep, so be good enough to aid me with your counsels."

"Speak, my friend," Father Seraphin replied, "you know that we are devoted to you."

"I know it, and you more than anyone else, father—hence I shall be forever grateful to you for the immense service you have rendered me. You know I forget nothing, and when the moment arrives, be assured that I shall pay my debt to you."

"Do not speak about that, friend; I knew the intense desire you had to see your mother again, and the anxiety that tortured you on the subject of that cruel separation; I only acted as anyone else would have done in my place, so dismiss the affair, I beg; I desire no other reward than to see you happy.

"I am so, my friend," the hunter exclaimed, with emotion; "I am more so than I can say, but it is that very happiness which terrifies me. My mother is near me, 'tis true, but, alas! You know the life to which a desert existence, made up of fighting and privation, condemns us; at this moment especially, when following out our implacable revenge, ought I to make my mother, a woman of great age and weak health, share the changes and dangers of that life? Can we, without cruelty, compel her to follow us on the trail of the villain we are pursuing? No, not one of you, I feel convinced, would give me that advice; but what is to be done? My mother cannot remain alone in this cavern abandoned, far from all help, and exposed to numberless privations. We know not whither the duty we have sworn to accomplish may drag us tomorrow. On the other hand, will my mother, so happy at our meeting, consent so promptly to even a temporary separation—a separation which circumstances may indefinitely prolong? I therefore beg you all, my only and true friends, to advise me, for I confess that I know not what resolution to form. Speak, my friends, tell me what I should do."

There was a lengthened silence among the hunters. Each understood Valentine's embarrassment, but the remedy was very difficult to find, as all were in their hearts made rest by the thought of pursuing Red Cedar closely, and not giving him respite until he had been punished for all his crimes. As usual under such circumstances, egotism and private interests took the place of friendship. Father Seraphin, the only disinterested person, saw clearly, hence he was the first to speak.

"My friend," he answered, "all you have said is most just; I undertake to make your mother listen to reason; she will understand, I feel assured, how urgent it is for her to return to civilisation, especially at the present period of the year; still, we must spare her feelings, and lead her back quietly to Mexico, without letting her suspect the separation she fears, and you fear too. During the journey hence to the civilised frontier, we will strive to prepare her for it, so that the blow may not be so rude when the moment for parting arrives. That is the only thing, I believe, you can do under the present circumstances. Come reflect; if you have any plan better than mine, I will be the first to submit."

"That advice is really the best that can be given me," Valentine said, warmly; "hence I eagerly adopt it. You will consent then, father, to accompany us to the frontier?"

"Of course, my friend, and further, were it necessary. Hence, do not let that trouble you; all we have now to decide is our road."

"That is true," said Valentine; "but here lies the difficulty. We must lodge my mother at a clearing near enough for me to see her frequently, and yet sufficiently distant from the desert to guard her against any danger."

"I fancy," Don Miguel remarked, "that my hacienda, at the Paso del Norte, will suit admirably; the more so, as it offers your mother all the guarantees of security and comfort you can require for her."

"In truth," Valentine exclaimed, "she would be most comfortable there, and I thank you cordially for your offer. Unfortunately, I cannot accept it."

"Why not?"

"For a reason you will appreciate as well as I do; it is much too far off."

"Do you think so?" Don Miguel asked.

Valentine could not repress a smile at this question.

"My friend," he said quietly to him, "since you have been in the desert, circumstances have forced you to take so many turns and twists, that you have completely lost all idea of distances, and do not suspect, I feel assured, how many miles we are from the Paso."

"I confess I do not," Don Miguel said in surprise. "Still, I fancy we cannot be very far."

"Make a guess."

"Well, one hundred and fifty miles, at the most."

"My poor friend," Valentine remarked, with a shrug of his shoulders, "you are out of your reckoning; we are more than seven hundred miles from the Paso del Norte, which is the extreme limit of the civilised settlements."

"The deuce!" the hacendero exclaimed, "I did not fancy we had gone so far."

"And," Valentine went on, "from that town to your hacienda is a distance of about fifty miles."

"Yes, about that."

"You see, then, that, to my great regret, it is impossible for me to accept your generous offer."

"What is to be done?" General Ibañez asked.

"It is awkward," Valentine replied, "for time presses."

"And your mother cannot possibly remain here; that is quite decided," Don Miguel objected.

Curumilla had hitherto listened to the talk in his usual way, not saying a word. Seeing that the hunters could not agree, he turned to Valentine.

"A friend would speak," he said.

All looked at him, for the hunters knew that Curumilla never spoke save to give advice, which was generally followed. Valentine gave a nod of assent.

"Our ears are open, chief," he said.

Curumilla rose.

"Koutonepi forgets," he quietly remarked.

"What do I forget?" the hunter asked.

"Koutonepi is the brother of Unicorn, the great Comanche Sachem."

Valentine struck his forehead in his delight.

"That is true," he exclaimed; "what was I thinking about? On my honour, chief, you are our Providence: nothing escapes you."

"Is my brother satisfied?" the chief asked joyously.

Valentine pressed his hand warmly.

"Chief," he exclaimed, "you are the best fellow I know; I thank you from my heart: however, we understand each other, I think, and need say nothing about that."

The Araucano Ulmen warmly returned his friend's pressure, and sat down, merely muttering one word, which contained all his impressions—

"Good."

The other persons, however, had not understood this little scene. Although they had been living for a long time in the company of the Aucas, they had not yet grown accustomed to his silence or learned to translate it; they therefore anxiously waited till Valentine gave them the explanation of the few sentences he had exchanged with his friend.

"The chief," Valentine said quickly, "has found at once what we have been racking our brains in vain to discover."

"How so? Explain," Don Miguel asked.

"What, you do not understand?"

"On my honour I do not."

"Yet it is very simple; I have been for a long time an adopted son of the Comanches; I belong to Unicorn's tribe; that chief will not refuse, I feel sure, to shelter my mother at his village. The redskins love me; Unicorn is devoted to me; my mother will be nursed and kindly treated by the Indians, while, on the other hand, it will be easy for me to see her whenever I have a moment to spare."

"Canarios!" General Ibañez exclaimed, "On my honour, chief," he added, as he gaily tapped the Araucanian's shoulder, "I must allow that we are all asses, and that you have more sense in your little finger than we have in our whole body."

This discussion had lasted some time, and the sun had risen for nearly an hour, when it terminated. Madame Guillois, entirely recovered from the emotions of the night, appeared in the grotto and kissed her son. When breakfast was over, the horses were saddled, and they set out.

"Where are you taking me to, my son?" the mother asked the hunter; "you know that henceforth I belong entirely to you, and you alone have the right to watch over me."

"Be at your ease, mother," Valentine answered; "although we are in the desert, I have found you a retreat in which you will not only be protected from every danger, but where it will be possible for me to see you at least once a week."

Valentine, like all men endowed with a firm and resolute character, instead of turning the difficulty, had preferred to attack it in front, persuaded that the harder the blow he dealt was, the shorter time its effect would last, and he should be enabled to lessen its consequences more easily. The old lady stopped her horse instinctively and looked at her son with tear-laden eyes.

"What do you say, Valentine?" she asked in a trembling voice; "Are you going to leave me?"

"You do not quite understand me, mother," he replied; "after so long a separation I could not consent to keep away from you."

"Alas!" she murmured.

"Still, my dear mother," he continued stoically, "you will have to convince yourself of one fact, that desert life is very different from civilised life."

"I know it, already," she said sighing.

"Very good," he continued; "this life has claims which it would take too long to explain to you, and necessitate constant marches and counter marches, going at one moment here, at another there, without apparent reason, living from hand to mouth, and eternally on horseback."

"Come," my boy, "do not make me suffer longer, but tell me at once what you wish to arrive at."

"At this, mother, that this life of unending fatigue and danger may be very agreeable to a young man like myself, endowed with an iron constitution, and long accustomed to its incidents; but that it is materially impossible for you, at your age, weak and sickly as you are: now you are my only comfort and treasure, mother; I have found you again by a miracle, and am determined to keep you as long as possible. For that reason I must not expose you through an improper weakness, to fatigues and privations which would kill you in a week."

"Well, then?" asked the mother timidly, involuntarily conquered by her son's peremptory accent.

"This is what I have resolved," said he insinuatingly, "as I do not wish you to suffer; we must be together as much as we can, if not always."

"Oh, yes," she said; "I only ask to see you ever, my child; what do I care for aught else, provided I am near you, can console you in sorrow, and rejoice in your joy!"

"Mother," the hunter said, "I believe I have arranged matters as well as possible. Father Seraphin will tell you any other plan would be futile."

"Let me hear it," she murmured.

"I am taking you to the village of the Comanches, whose adopted son I am; their chief loves me as a brother; the village is only a few leagues off, and you will be there among friends, who will respect you and pay you the greatest attention."

"But you, my child?"

"I will visit you as often as I can, and, believe me, few days will pass without my seeing you."

"Alas! My poor child, why insist on leading this life of danger and fatigue? If you liked, we could be so happy in a little village at home. Have you forgotten France entirely, Valentine?"

The hunter sighed.

"No, mother," he said, with an effort, "since I have seen you again, all the memories of my youth have revived; I know now the desire I had to see France again some day; the sight of you has made me understand that a man cannot voluntarily resign those home joys, whose charm he can only truly understand when unable to enjoy them. Hence I soon intend to remove you from this country disinherited by Heaven, and return to our native land."

"Alas!" she said, with an accent of soft reproach, "We should be so happy there; why not return at once?"

"Because it cannot be, mother; I have a sacred duty to accomplish here; but I pledge you my word of honour that when I have fulfilled the duty I have imposed on myself and am free, we will not remain an hour longer here. So have patience, mother; perhaps we may start for France within two months."

"May Heaven grant it, my child," the old lady said, sadly; "well, your will be done, I am prepared to wait."

"Thanks, mother; your kindness renders me happier than I can describe to you."

The old lady sighed, but gave no answer, and the little party marched silently in the direction of the Comanche village, the outskirts of which they reached at about three in the afternoon.

"Mother," Valentine said, "you are not yet used to Indian fashions; do not be frightened at anything you may see or hear."

"Am I not near you?" she said "What can I feel afraid of?"

"Oh!" he said, joyfully, "you are a true mother."

"Alas!" she answered, with a stifled sigh, "You are mistaken, child, I am only a poor old woman, who loves her son, that is all."

White Gazelle had rejoined Bloodson, who was encamped with his band on the top of a hill, where the prairie could be surveyed for a long distance. It was night, the fires were already lit, and the rangers, assembled around the braseros, were supping gaily. Bloodson was delighted at seeing his niece again; both had a long conversation, at the end of which the Avenger, as he called himself, ordered the ranchero to approach.

Despite of all his impudence, it was not without a feeling of terror that worthy Andrés Garote found himself face to face with this man, whose glances seemed trying to read his inmost thoughts. Bloodson's reputation had been so long established on the prairies that the ranchero must feel affected in his presence. Bloodson was seated in front of a fire, smoking an Indian pipe, with White Gazelle by his side; and for a moment the ranchero almost repented the step he had taken. But the feeling did not last an instant; hatred immediately regained the upper hand, and every trace of emotion disappeared from his face.

"Come here, scoundrel," Bloodson said to him. "From what the señora has just said to me, you fancy you have in your hands the means of destroying Red Cedar?"

"Did I say Red Cedar?" the ranchero answered; "I do not think so, excellency."

"Whom did you allude to, then?"

"To Fray Ambrosio."

"What do I care for that scurvy monk?" Bloodson remarked, with a shrug of his shoulders; "his affairs do not concern me, and I will not trouble myself with them; other and more important duties claim my care."

"That is possible, Excellency," the ranchero answered, with more assurance than might have been assumed; "but I have only to deal with Fray Ambrosio."

"In that case you can go to the deuce, for I shall certainly not help you in your plans."

Andrés Garote, thus brutally received, was not discouraged, however; he shrugged his shoulders with a cunning look, and assumed his most insinuating tone.

"There is no knowing, Excellency," he said.

"Hum! That seems to me difficult."

"Less so than you fancy, Excellency."

"How so?"

"You bear a grudge against Red Cedar, I think?"

"How does that concern you, scoundrel?" Bloodson asked, roughly.

"Not at all; the more so as I owe him nothing; still, it is a different affair with you, Excellency."

"How do you know?"

"I presume so, Excellency; hence I intend to offer you a bargain."

"A bargain!" Bloodson repeated, disdainfully.

"Yes, Excellency," the ranchero said, boldly; "and a bargain advantageous to yourself, I venture to say."

"And for you?"

"For me too, naturally."

Bloodson began laughing.

"The man is mad," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, and, turning to his men, added—"where the deuce was your head when you brought him to me?"

"Nonsense," White Gazelle said, "you had better listen to him; that will do you no harm."

"The señora is right," the ranchero eagerly replied; "listen to me, Excellency, that pledges you to nothing; besides, you will be always able to decline if what I propose does not suit you."

"That is true," Bloodson replied, contemptuously—"Speak then, picaro, and be brief."

"Oh, I am not in the habit of making long speeches."

"Come to the point."

"It is this," the ranchero said, boldly; "you wish, I do not know why, and do not care, to revenge yourself on Red Cedar; for certain reasons, unnecessary for me to tell you, I wish to avenge myself on Ambrosio; that is clear, I fancy?"

"Perfectly so—go on."

"Very well. Now this is what I propose to you—aid me to avenge myself on the monk, and I will help you with the bandit."

"I do not need you for that."

"Perhaps you do, Excellency; and if I did not fear appearing impudent to you, I would even say—"

"What?"

"That I am indispensable to you."

"Voto a Dios!" Bloodson said, with an outburst of laughter, "This is beyond a joke; the scoundrel is absolutely making fun of me."

Andrés Garote stood unmoved before the ranger.

"Come, come," the latter continued, "this is far more amusing than I at first fancied; and how are you indispensable to me?"

"Oh, Excellency, that is very simple; you do not know what has become of Red Cedar?"

"That is true; I have been seeking him in vain for a long time."

"I defy you to find him, unless I help you."

"Then you know where he is?" Bloodson exclaimed, suddenly raising his head.

"Ah! That interests you now, Excellency," the ranchero said, with a crafty look.

"Answer, yes or no," the ranger said, roughly; "do you know where he is?"

"If I did not, should I have come to you?"

Bloodson reflected for a moment.

"Tell me where he is."

"Our bargain holds good?"

"It does."

"You swear it?"

"On my honour."

"Good!" the other said joyfully; "now listen to me."

"Go on."

"Of course you are aware that Red Cedar and the Trail-hunter had a fight?"

"I am—go on."

"After the battle, all bolted in different directions; Red Cedar was wounded, hence he did not go far, but soon fell in a fainting fit at the foot of a tree. The Frenchman and his friends sought him on all sides, and I believe they would have made him spend a very unpleasant quarter of an hour if they had laid hands on him. Fortunately for him, his horse had carried him into the middle of the virgin forest, where no one dreamed of pursuing him. Chance, or rather my good fortune, I now believe, led me to the spot where he was; his daughter Ellen was near him, and paying him the most touching attention; it really almost affected me. I cannot tell you how she got there, but there she was. On seeing Red Cedar, I thought for a moment about going to find the French hunter, and telling him of my discovery."

"Hum! And why did you not carry out that idea, scoundrel?"

"For a very simple, though conclusive reason."

"Let us hear it," said Bloodson, who had begun to listen with extreme interest to the ranchero's wandering statement.

"This is it," he went on. "Don Valentine is a rough fellow; I am not in the odour of sanctity with him; besides, he was with a crowd of Apaches and Comanches, each a bigger scamp than the other; in a word, I was frightened for my scalp, and held off, as I might have plucked the chestnuts from the fire for another man's profit."

"Not badly reasoned."

"Was it now, Excellency? hence, while I was reflecting on what I had better do, a band of some ten horsemen came, I know not whence, to the spot where that poor devil of a Red Cedar was lying half dead."

"He was really wounded?"

"Oh, yes, and dangerously, I undertake to say; the leader of the party was a French missionary you must know."

"Father Seraphin?"

"The very man."

"What did he?"

"What I should certainly not have done in his place—he carried Red Cedar away with him."

"In that I recognise him," Bloodson could not refrain from saying. "And where did he take the wounded man?"

"To a cavern, where I will lead you whenever you like."

"You are not lying?"

"Oh, no, Excellency."

"Very good, go and sleep; you can count on my promise, if you are faithful to me."

"Thanks, Excellency; be at your ease, self-interest urges me not to deceive you."

"That is true."

The ranchero withdrew, and an hour later was sleeping as every honest man should do, who feels conscious of having performed his duty. The next morning at daybreak Bloodson's band set out. But in the desert it is often very difficult to find those you seek, owing to the nomadic life everybody is obliged to lead in order to gain his livelihood; and Bloodson, who wished first to consult with Valentine and his friends, lost much time before learning the exact spot where they were. At length, one of the scouts told him that the Frenchman was at Unicorn's winter village, and he proceeded there at once.

In the interim, Bloodson ordered Andrés Garote to watch Red Cedar's movements, as he did not like to take a decisive step till he had acquired a certainty. Nothing would have been easier than to go to Father Seraphin, and demand the surrender of the wounded man; but he felt a repugnance to this. Bloodson shared in the respect the holy missionary inspired all within the Far West; and he would not have dared to summon him to surrender his guest, certain as he was beforehand that the other would peremptorily refuse; at the same time he did not like to employ violence to wrest his prey from a man whose character he admired. He must, therefore, await until Red Cedar, cured of his wounds, quitted his protection; and this Bloodson did, though having his movements watched.

At length Andrés Garote appeared, all joyous, in Bloodson's camp; he was the bearer of excellent news: Father Seraphin, after curing Red Cedar, had installed him in a jacal, where he and his daughter lived like two anchorites. Bloodson uttered a shout of joy at this news. Without even taking time to reflect, he leaped on his horse, leaving the temporary command of the band to his men, and started off at full speed for Unicorn's village.

The distance was not great, and the ranger covered it in less than two hours. Bloodson was beloved by the Comanches, to whom he had frequent opportunities of being useful; hence he was received by them with all the honours and ceremonies employed in such cases. Unicorn, accompanied by some of the principal chiefs of the tribe, came to receive him a short distance from the village, yelling, firing their muskets, and making their horses curvet. Bloodson gladly yielded to the chief's wishes, and galloped along by his side.

The Comanches are excessively discreet; they never take the liberty of asking questions of their guests before the latter authorise them. So soon as Bloodson had taken his seat by the fire of the council lodge, and smoked the great calumet of peace, Unicorn bowed to him gravely, and took the word.

"My paleface brother is welcome among his red friends," he said; "has my brother had a good hunt?"

"The buffaloes are numerous near the mountains," Bloodson answered; "my young men have killed many."

"All the better; my brother will not suffer from famine."

The ranger bowed his thanks.

"Will my brother remain some days with his red friends?" the chief again asked; "they would be happy to have him among them for a season."

"My hours are counted," Bloodson answered. "I merely intended paying a visit to my brothers to ask after their fare, as I passed their village."

At this moment Valentine appeared in the doorway.

"Here is my brother, Koutonepi," Unicorn said.

"He is welcome," the ranger said; "I wished to see him."

"What accident has brought you here?" the hunter asked him.

"To tell you where Red Cedar is hidden at this moment," Bloodson answered, distinctly.

Valentine started; and bent on him a piercing glance.

"Oh, oh," he said, "that is great news you give me."

"I do not give it, but sell it to you."

"What? explain yourself, pray."

"I will be brief. There is not a man on the prairies who has not a terrible account to settle with that vile bandit?"

"That is true."

"The monster has burdened the earth too long—he must disappear."

Bloodson uttered these words with such an accent of hatred, that all present, although they were men endowed with nerves of steel, felt a shudder course through their veins. Valentine looked sternly at the ranger.

"You owe this man a heavy grudge?" he said.

"Greater than I can express."

"Good, go on."

At this moment Father Seraphin entered the lodge, but was not noticed, so greatly was the attention of the audience concentrated on Bloodson. The missionary stood motionless in the darkest corner, and listened.

"This is what I propose," Bloodson went on. "I will reveal to you where the villain is lurking; we will spread so as to envelope him in an impassable circle, and if you or the chiefs here present are luckier than I, and seize him, you will deliver him into my hands."

"What to do with him?"

"To take an exemplary vengeance on him."

"I cannot promise that," Valentine said slowly.

"For what reason?"

"You have just given it: there is not a man on the prairie but has a terrible account to settle with this villain."

"Well?"

"The man he has most outraged is, in my opinion, Don Miguel de Zarate, whose daughter he so basely murdered. Don Miguel alone has the right to deal with him as he thinks proper."

Bloodson gave a start of disappointment.

"Oh, were he here!" he exclaimed.

"Here I am, sir," the hacendero replied as he stepped forward; "I too have vengeance to take on Red Cedar; but I wish it to be great and noble, in the light of the sun, and the presence of all: I do not wish to assassinate, but to punish him."

"Good," Bloodson exclaimed, stifling a cry of joy; "our thoughts are the same, caballero; for what I desire is to deal with Red Cedar, according to Lynch Law, in its entire rigour, on the very spot where he committed his first crime, and in the sight of the population he has horrified. In the Far West, I am not only called the Son of Blood, but also the Avenger and the judge."

After these words, spoken with feverish energy, there was a gloomy silence which lasted some time.