CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE TRAIL.
The dawn was just commencing to overshadow the horizon with transientopaline tints; a few stars were still glistening in the dark blue sky.The wild beasts were leaving their watering places, and slowly retiringto their dens, disturbing at intervals the solemn silence of the desertwith their sinister howling.
Valentine opened his eyes, looked around him anxiously, and afteremploying a few seconds in shaking off his drowsiness, he rose slowlyand awoke his comrades, who were still sleeping, rolled up in theirblankets.
Soon, the whole little party were collected round the fire, on which thehunter had thrown a few armfuls of dry wood, and in whose brilliantflames the breakfast was now preparing.
The Mexicans, with their eyes fixed Valentine, silently awaited hisexplanation, for they guessed that he had important communications tomake to them. But their expectations were foiled, at least for thepresent, and the Frenchman remained quite silent.
When the meal was ready, Valentine made his comrades a signal to eat;and for some twenty minutes no other sound could be heard save thatcaused by the formidable appetites of the hunters. When they hadfinished, Valentine quietly lit his Indian pipe, and indicated to hiscompanions that he wished to speak. All turned toward him.
"My friends," he said, in his sympathetic voice, "what I feared hashappened. Red Cedar has left his island camp; he has, if I am notmistaken, several days' start of us, and in vain did I try last night totake up his trail: it was impossible. Red Cedar is a villain, endowedwith a fortunately far from common ferocity, whose destruction we havesworn, and I hope we shall keep our word. But I am compelled to do himthe justice of saying, that he is one of the most experienced hunters inthe Far West; and no one, when he pleases, can more cleverly hide hisown trail, and discover that of others. We are, therefore, about to havea trial of patience with him, for he has learned all the stratagems ofthe redskins, of whom, I am not ashamed to say, he is the superior inroguery."
"Alas!" Don Miguel muttered.
"I have sworn to restore your daughter to you, my friend," Valentinecontinued, "with the help of heaven. I shall keep my oath, but I amabout to undertake a gigantic task: hence I ask of you all the mostperfect obedience. Your ignorance of the desert might, under certaincircumstances, cause us serious injury, and make us lose in a fewminutes the fruit of lengthened researches: hence I ask of yourfriendship that you will let yourselves be entirely guided by myexperience."
"My friend," Don Miguel replied, with an accent full of majesty,"whatever you may order, we will do; for you alone can successfullycarry out the difficult enterprise in which we are engaged."
"Good! I thank you for the obedience you promise me, my friend: withoutit, it would be impossible to succeed. Now leave me to arrange with theIndian chiefs."
Valentine rose, made a sign to Curumilla and Eagle-wing, and the threesat down a short distance off. Valentine passed his calumet to theAraucano, who took a few whiffs and then handed it to Eagle-wing, andhe, after smoking also, returned it to the hunter.
"My brothers know why I have convened them in council," Valentine saidpresently.
The two chiefs bowed in reply.
"Very good," he continued; "now what is the advice of my brother? Letthe Sachem of the Coras speak first. He is a wise chief, whose counselscan only be good for us."
"Why does Koutonepi ask the advice of his red brothers?" he said."Koutonepi is a great warrior: he has the eye of the eagle, the scent ofthe dog, the courage of the lion, and the prudence of the serpent. Noone can discover better than him a trail lost in the sand: whatKoutonepi does is well done: his brothers will follow him."
"Thanks, chief," Valentine continued; "but in what direction should weproceed?"
"Red Cedar is the friend of Stanapat: after his defeat the scalp hunterwill have sought a refuge with his friend."
"That is also my opinion," the hunter remarked. "What do you think,chief?" he said, turning to Curumilla.
The Araucano shook his head.
"No," he said, "Red Cedar loves gold."
"That is true," said Valentine: "besides, the Apaches are too near us.You are right, chief: we must therefore proceed northward?"
Curumilla nodded an assent.
"No horses," he said, "they destroy a trail."
"We will go on foot. Have you Red Cedar's measure?"
Curumilla fumbled in his medicine bag, and produced an old wornmoccasin.
"Oh!" Valentine said eagerly; "that is better still: let us be off atonce."
They broke up the conference.
"My friends," the hunter said to the Mexicans, "this is what we haveresolved on: you three, alone, will be mounted. Each of you will leadone of our horses, so that we may mount at the first signal. The twochiefs and myself will march on foot, in order to let no sign escape us.You will keep two hundred yards, behind us: and as I noticed that thereare at this moment a great many trumpeter swans in the river, that willbe our rallying cry. All this is arranged?"
"Yes," the three gentlemen answered unanimously.
"Good! now to set out, and try never to let us out of sight."
"Be at your ease, my friend, about that," the general said; "we have toogreat an interest in not quitting you. _Canarios!_ what would become ofus alone, lost in this confounded desert?"
"Come, come, something tells me that we shall succeed," Valentine saidgaily, "so we will have courage."
"May heaven grant you are not mistaken, my friend," Don Miguel saidsadly. "My poor child!"
"We will deliver her. I have followed a more difficult trail beforenow."
With these consolatory words, the two Indians and the hunter set out.Instead of taking Indian file, as ordinarily adopted on the prairie, andmarching one after the other, they spread like a fan, in order to have agreater space to explore, and not lose the slightest indication. So soonas the scouts were at the arranged distance, the Mexicans mounted andfollowed them, being careful not to let them out of sight, as far as waspossible.
When Valentine told Don Miguel that he had followed more difficulttrails, he was either boasting, or, as is more probable, judging fromhis frank character, he wished to restore hope to his friend.
In order to follow a trail, it must exist. Red Cedar was too old a woodranger to neglect the slightest precaution, for he knew too well that,however large the desert may be, a man habituated to cross it alwaysSucceeds in finding the man he is pursuing.
He knew, too, that he was followed by the most experienced hunter of theFar West, whom, by common accord, white and half-breed trappers, and theredskins themselves, had surnamed "The Trail-hunter." Hence he surpassedhimself, and nothing was to be seen.
Although Valentine and his two comrades might interrogate the desert, itremained dumb and indecipherable as a closed book. For five hours theyhad been walking, and nothing had given an embodiment to theirsuspicions, or proved to them that they were on the right track.
Still, with that patience which characterises men accustomed to prairielife, and whose tenacity no word can express, the three men marched on,advancing, step by step, with their bodies bent, their eyes fixed on theground, never yielding to the insurmountable difficulties that opposedthem, but, on the contrary, excited by these very difficulties, whichproved that they had an adversary worthy of them.
Valentine walked in the centre, with Curumilla on his right andEagle-wing on his left. They were crossing at this moment a level plain,where a considerable view could be enjoyed; on one side stood theoutposts of the virgin forest, on the other was the Gila, running over asand bed. On reaching the bank of a small stream, obstructed withshrubs, Valentine noticed all at once that two or three small brancheswere broken a few inches from the ground.
The hunter stopped, and in order to examine more closely, lay down onthe ground, carefully regarding the fracture of the wood, as he thrusthis head into the copse. Suddenly he started up on his knees, uttering acry of joy: his comrades ran up to him.
"A
h, by Heaven," Valentine exclaimed; "now I have him. Look, look!"
And he showed the Indians a few horse's hairs he held in his hand.Curumilla examined them attentively, while Eagle-wing, without saying aword, formed with earth and stones a dyke across the bed of the stream,which was only a few yards in width.
"Well, what do you say to that, chief?" Valentine asked. "Have I guessedit?"
"Wah," the Indian replied, "Koutonepi has good eyes; these hairs comefrom Red Cedar's horse."
"I noticed that the horse he rode was iron grey."
"Yes; but it halts."
"I know it, with the off foreleg."
At this moment the Coras summoned them: he had turned the course of thestream, and the traces of a horse's hoofs could be distinctly traced inthe sand.
"Do you see?" said Valentine.
"Yes," Curumilla remarked; "but he is alone."
"Hang it, so he is."
The two warriors looked at him in amazement.
"Listen," Valentine said, after a moment's reflection, "this is a falsetrail. On reaching this stream, where it was impossible for him not toleave signs, Red Cedar, supposing that we should look for them in thewater, crossed the stream alone, although it would be easy for men lessaccustomed to the desert than ourselves to suppose that a party hadcrossed here. Look down there on the other side, at a horse's marks. RedCedar wanted to be too clever; showing us a trail at all has ruined him.The rest of the band, which he joined again presently, instead ofcrossing, descended the bed of the stream to the Gila, where theyembarked and passed to the other side of the river."
The two Indians, on hearing this clear explanation, could not repress acry of admiration. Valentine burst the dyke, and with their help formedanother one hundred yards below, a short distance from the Gila. The bedof the stream was hardly dry, ere the two Indians clapped their hands,while uttering exclamations of delight.
Valentine had guessed aright: this time they had discovered the realtrail, for the bed of the stream had been trampled by a large band ofhorses.
"Oh, oh," Valentine said; "I fancy we are on the right road."
He then imitated the cry of a swan, and the Mexicans, who had beenpuzzled by the movements of the hunters, and were anxious to hear thenews, galloped up.
"Well?" Don Miguel shouted.
"Good news," said Valentine.
"You have the trail?" the general asked, hurriedly.
"I think so," the hunter modestly replied.
"Oh!" said Don Pablo, joyously; "In that case we shall soon catch thevillain."
"I hope so. We must now cross the river; but let us three go first."
The three hunters leaped on their horses and crossed the river, followedat a distance by the others. On reaching the other side of the Gila,instead of ascending the bank, they followed the current for somedistance, carefully examining the ground.
"Ah!" Valentine suddenly exclaimed, as he stopped his horse. "I thinkthe men we are pursuing landed here."
"That is the place," said Curumilla, with a nod.
"Yes," Moukapec confirmed him; "it is easy to see."
In fact, the spot was admirably adapted for landing without leaving anysigns. The bank was bordered for nearly one hundred yards with largeflat rocks, shaped like tombstones, where the horses could rest theirhoofs without any fear of leaving a mark. These atones extended for aconsiderable distance into the plain, and thus formed a species ofnatural highway, nearly half a mile in width.
Still, a thing had happened which no one could have foreseen, and whichwould have passed unnoticed, save for Valentine's watchful eye. One ofthe horses, in climbing on to the rock, had miscalculated its distanceand slipped, so that an almost imperceptible graze, left by its hoof onthe stone, showed the quick-sighted hunter where the party struck thebank.
The hunters followed the same road; but, so soon as they had landed, thetrail disappeared anew. Although the scouts looked around with the mostminute attention, they found nothing that would indicate to them theroad followed by the enemy on leaving the water.
Valentine, with his hands resting on the muzzle of his rifle, wasthinking deeply, at one moment looking on the ground, at another raisinghis eyes to the sky, like a man busied with the solution of a problemwhich seems to him impossible, when suddenly he perceived a white headedeagle soaring in long circles over a mass of rocks, situated a little tothe right of the spot where he was standing.
"Hum," the hunter said to himself, as he watched the eagle, whosecircles were growing gradually smaller, "what is the matter with thatbird? I am curious to know."
Summoning his two comrades, he threw his rifle on his back, and hurriedtoward the spot above which the bird of prey still continued to hover.Valentine imparted to the Indians the suspicions that had sprung up inhis mind, and the three men began painfully climbing up the mass ofrocks strangely piled up one on the other, and which rose like a smallhill in the middle of the prairie.
On reaching the top the hunters stopped to pant; the eagle, startled bytheir unexpected appearance, had flown reluctantly away. They foundthemselves on a species of platform, which must infallibly have onceserved as a sepulchre to some renowned Indian warrior, for severalshapeless fragments lay here and there, near a rather wide cavity, someten yards in width.
Valentine bent over the edge of this hole, but the obscurity was sodense, owing to the shape of the cavity, that he could perceive nothing,though his sense of smell was most disagreeably assailed by a fetid odourof decaying flesh.
"Hilloah! what is this?" he asked.
Without speaking, Curumilla had lit a candle wood torch which he handedthe hunter. Valentine bent over again and looked in.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "Red Cedar's horse--I have you now, my fine fellow!but how the deuce did he manage to get the animal up here withoutleaving any trail?" After a moment he added: "Oh, what a goose I am! Thehorse was not dead, he led it up here, and then forced it into the hole.By Jove! It is a good trick: I must confess that Red Cedar is a veryremarkable rogue, and had it not been for the eagle, I should not havediscovered the road he took--but now I have him! Were he ten times ascunning he would not escape me."
And, all delighted, Valentine rejoined the Mexicans, who were anxiouslyawaiting the result of his researches.