At about two leagues from Santa Fe, in a clearing situated on the banks of the stream which borders that town, and on the evening of the same day, a man was seated before a large fire, which he carefully kept up, while actively engaged in making preparations for supper. A frugal meal, at any rate, this supper! It was composed of a buffalo hump, a few potatoes, and maize tortillas baked on the ashes, the whole washed down with pulque.

The night was gloomy. Heavy black clouds coursed athwart the sky, at times intercepting the sickly rays of the moon, which only shed an uncertain light over the landscape, which was itself buried in one of those dense mists that, in equatorial countries, exhale from the ground after a hot day. The wind blew violently through the trees, whose branches came in contact, with plaintive moans: and in the depths of the woods the miawling of the wild cats was mingled with the snarl of the coyotes and the howls of the pumas and jaguars. All at once the sound of galloping horses could be heard in the forest, and two riders burst into the clearing. On seeing them the hunter uttered an exclamation of joy, and hurried to meet them. They were Don Pablo and Curumilla.

"Heaven be praised!" the hunter said. "Here you are at last. I was beginning to grow alarmed at your long absence."

"You see that nothing has happened to me," the young man answered, affectionately pressing the hunter's hands.

Don Pablo had dismounted, and hobbled his own horse and Curumilla's near Valentine, while the Indian chief busied himself in preparing the supper.

"Come, come," the hunter said gaily, "to table. You must be hungry, and I am dying of inanition. You can tell me all that has occurred while we are eating."

The three men went to the table; that is, they seated themselves on the grass in front of the fire, and vigorously assailed their meagre repast. Desert life has this peculiarity – that in whatever position you may find yourself, as the struggles you go through are generally physical rather than moral, nature never resigns her claims: you feel the need of keeping up your strength, so as to be ready for all eventualities. There is no alarm great enough to prevent you from eating and drinking.

"Now," Valentine asked presently, "what have you done? I fancy you remained much longer than was necessary in that accursed town."

"We did, my friend. Certain reasons forced me to remain longer than I had at first intended."

"Proceed in regular order, if you have no objection. I fancy that is the only way of understanding each other."

"Act as you please, my friend."

"Very good: the chief and I will light our Indian pipes while you make your cigarette. We will sit with our backs to the fire, so as to watch the neighbourhood, and in that way can converse without apprehension. What do you say, Pablo?"

"You are always right, my friend. Your inexhaustible gaiety, your honest carelessness, restore me all my courage, and make me quite a different man."

"Hum!" Valentine said, "I am glad to hear you speak so. The position is serious, it is true; but it is far from being desperate. The chief and I have many times been in situations were our lives only depended on a thread: and yet we always emerged from them honourably – did we not, chief?"

"Yes," the Indian answered laconically, drawing in a mouthful of smoke, which he sent forth again from his mouth and nostrils.

"But that is not the question of the moment. I have sworn to save your father and sister, Pablo, and will do so, or my carcass shall be food for the wild beasts of the prairie; so leave me to act. Have you seen Father Seraphin?"

"Yes, I have. Our poor friend is still very weak and pale, and his wound is scarce cicatrised. Still, paying no heed to his sufferings, and deriving strength from his unbounded devotion to humanity, he has done all we agreed on. For the last week he has only left my father to hasten to his judges. He has seen the general, the governor, the bishop – everybody, in short – and has neglected nothing. Unfortunately all his exertions have hitherto been fruitless."

"Patience!" the hunter said with a smile of singular meaning.

"Father Seraphin believes for certain that my father will be placed in the capilla within two days. The governor wishes to have done with it – that is the expression he employed; and Father Seraphin told me that we have not a moment to lose."

"Two days are a long time, my friend; before they have elapsed many things may have occurred."

"That is true; but my father's life is at stake, and I feel timid."

"Good, Don Pablo; I like to hear you speak so. But reassure yourself; all is going on well, I repeat."

"Still, my friend, I believe it would be wise to take certain precautions. Remember it is a question of life or death, and we must make haste. How many times, under similar circumstances, have the best arranged plans failed! Do you think that your measures are well taken? Do you not fear lest an unhappy accident may derange all your plans at the decisive moment?"

"We are playing at this moment the devil's own game, my friend," Valentine answered coldly. "We have chance on our side; that is to say, the greatest power that exists, and which governs the world."

The young man lowered his head, as if but slightly convinced. The hunter regarded him for a moment with a mixture of interest and tender pity, and then continued in a soothing voice, —

"Listen, Don Pablo de Zarate," he said. "I have said that I will save your father, and mean to do so. Still I wish him to leave the prison in which he now is, like a man of his character ought to leave it, in open day, greeted by the applause of the crowd, and not by escaping furtively during the night, like a vile criminal. Hang it all! Do you think it would have been difficult for me to enter the town, and effect your father's escape by filing the bars or bribing the jailer? I would not do it. Don Miguel would not have accepted that cowardly and shameful flight. Your father shall leave his prison, but begged to do so by the governor himself, and all the authorities of Santa Fe. So regain your courage, and no longer doubt a man whose friendship and experience should, on the contrary, restore your confidence."

The young man had listened to these words with even increasing interest. When Valentine ceased speaking he seized his hand.

"Pardon me, my friend," he answered him. "I know how devoted you are to my family; but I suffer, and grief renders me unjust. Forgive me."

"Child, let us forget it all. Was the town quiet today?"

"I cannot tell you, for I was so absorbed in thought that I saw nothing going on around me. Still I fancy there was a certain agitation, which was not natural, on the Plaza Mayor, near the governor's palace."

Valentine indulged once again in that strange smile that had already played round the corners of his delicate lips.

"Good!" he said. "And did you, as I advised, try to gain any information about Red Cedar?"

"Yes," he answered with a start of joy, "I did; and I have positive news."

"Ah, ah! How so?"

"I will tell you."

And Don Pablo described the scene that had taken place in the rancho. The hunter listened to it with the utmost attention, and when it was finished he tossed his head several times with an air of dissatisfaction.

"All young people are so," he muttered; "they always allow their passion to carry them beyond the bounds of reason. You were wrong, extremely wrong, Don Pablo," he then added. "Red Cedar believed you dead, and that might have been of great use to us presently. You do not know the immense power that demon has at his disposal: all the bandits on the frontier are devoted to him. Your outbreak will be most injurious to your sister's safety."

"Still, my friend – "

"You acted like a madman in arousing the slumbering fury of the tiger. Red Cedar will persist in destroying you. I have known the wretch for a long time. But that is not the worst you have done."

"What is it, then?"

"Why, madman as you are, instead of keeping dark, watching your enemies without saying a word – in short, seeing through their game – by an unpardonable act of bravado you have unmasked all your batteries."

"I do not understand you, my friend."

"Fray Ambrosio is a villain of a different stamp from Red Cedar, it is true; but I consider him even a greater scoundrel than the scalp hunter. At any rate, the latter is purely a rogue, and you know what to expect from him: all about him bears the stamp of his hideous soul. Had you stabbed that wild beast, who perspires blood by every pore, and dreams of naught but murder, I might possibly have pardoned you; but you have completely failed, not only in prudence, but in good sense, by acting as you have done with Fray Ambrosio. That man is a hypocrite. He owes all to your family, and is furious at seeing this treachery discovered. Take care, Don Pablo. You have made at one blow two implacable enemies, the more terrible now because they have nothing to guard against."

"It is true," the young man said; "I acted like a fool. But what would you? At the sight of those two men, when I heard from their very lips the crimes they had committed, and those they still meditate against us, I was no longer master of myself. I entered the rancho, and you know the rest."

"Yes, yes, the cuchillada was a fine one. Certainly the bandit deserved it; but I fear lest the cross you so smartly drew on his face will cost you dearly some day."

"Well, let us leave it in the hand of Heaven. You know the proverb, 'It is better to forget what cannot be remedied.' Provided my father escape the fate that menaces him, I shall be happy. I shall take my precautions to defend myself."

"Did you learn nothing further?"

"Yes; Red Cedar's gambusinos are encamped a short distance from us. I know that their chief intends starting tomorrow at the latest."

"Oh, oh! Already? We must make haste and prepare our ambuscade, if we wish to discover the road they mean to follow."

"When shall we start?"

"At once."

The three men made their preparations; the horses were saddled, the small skins the horseman always carries at his saddle-bow in these dry countries were filled with water, and five minutes later the hunters mounted. At the moment they were leaving the clearing a rustling of leaves was heard, the branches parted, and an Indian appeared. It was Unicorn, the great sachem of the Comanches. On seeing him the three men dismounted and waited. Valentine advanced alone to meet the Indian.

"My brother is welcome," he said. "What does he want of me?"

"To see the face of a friend," the chief answered in a gentle voice.

The two men then bowed after the fashion of the prairie. After this ceremony Valentine went on:

"My father must approach the fire, and smoke from the calumet of his white friends."

"I will do so," Unicorn answered.

And drawing near the fire, he crouched down in Indian fashion, took his pipe from his belt, and smoked in silence. The hunters, seeing the turn this unexpected interview was taking, had fastened up their horses, and seated themselves again round the fire. A few minutes passed thus, no one speaking, each waiting till the Indian chief should explain the motive of his coming. At length Unicorn shook the ashes from his calumet, returned it to his belt, and addressed Valentine.

"Is my brother setting out to hunt buffaloes again?" he said. "There are many this year on the prairies of the Rio Gila."

"Yes," the Frenchman replied, "we are going hunting. Does my brother intend to accompany us?"

"No; my heart is sad.

"What means the chief? Has any misfortune happened to him?"

"Does not my brother understand me, or am I really mistaken? It is that my brother only really loves the buffaloes, whose meat he eats, and whose hides he sells at the toldería?"

"Let my brother explain himself more clearly; then I will try to answer him."

There was a moment of silence. The Indian seemed to be reflecting deeply: his nostrils were dilated, and at times his black eye flashed fire. The hunters calmly awaited the issue of this conversation, whose object they had not yet caught. At length Unicorn raised his head, restored all the serenity to his glance, and said in a soft and melodious voice, —

"Why pretend not to understand me, Koutonepi? A warrior must not have a forked tongue. What a man cannot do alone, two can attempt and carry out. Let my brother speak: the ears of a friend are open."

"My brother is right. I will not deceive his expectations. The hunt I wish to make is serious. I am anxious to save a woman of my colour; but what can the will of one man effect?"

"Koutonepi is not alone: I see at his side the best two rifles of the frontier. What does the white hunter tell me? Is he no longer the great warrior I knew? Does he doubt the friendship of his brother Haboutzelze, the great sachem of the Comanches?"

"I never doubted the friendship of my brother. I am an adopted son of his nation. At this very moment is he not seeking to do me a service?"

"That service is only half what I wish to do. Let my brother speak the word, and two hundred Comanche warriors shall join him to deliver the virgin of the palefaces, and take the scalps of her ravishers."

Valentine started with joy at this noble offer.

"Thanks, chief," he said eagerly. "I accept; and I know that your word is sacred."

"Michabou protects us," the Indian said. "My brother can count on me. A chief does not forget a service. I owe obligations to the pale hunter, and will deliver to him the gachupino robbers."

"Here is my hand, chief: my heart has long been yours."

"My brother speaks well. I have done what he requested of me."

And, bowing courteously, the Comanche chief withdrew without adding a word.

"Don Pablo," Valentine exclaimed joyously, "I can now guarantee your father's safety: this night – perhaps tomorrow – he will be free."

The young man fell into the hunter's arms, and hid his head on his honest chest, not having the strength to utter a word. A few minutes later, the hunters left the clearing to go in search of the gambusinos, and prepare their ambuscade.

CHAPTER IV
SUNBEAM

We will now go a little way back, in order to clear up certain portions of the conversation between Valentine and Unicorn, whose meaning the reader can not have caught.

Only a few months after their arrival in Apacheria the Frenchman and Curumilla were hunting the buffalo on the banks of the Rio Gila. It was a splendid day in the month of July. The two hunters, fatigued by a long march under the beams of the parching sun, that fell vertically on their heads, had sheltered themselves under a clump of cedar wood trees, and, carelessly stretched out on the ground, were smoking while waiting till the great heat had passed, and the evening breeze rose to enable them to continue their hunt. A quarter of elk was roasting for their dinner.

"Eh, penni," Valentine said, addressing his comrade, and rising on his elbow, "the dinner seems to be ready; so suppose we feed? The sun is rapidly sinking behind the virgin forest, and we shall soon have to start again."

"Eat," Curumilla answered, sharply.

The meat was laid on a leaf between the two hunters, who began eating with good appetite, and indulging in cakes of hautle. These cakes, which are very good, are certainly curious. They are made of the pounded eggs of a species of water bug, collected by a sort of harvest in the Mexican lakes. They are found on the leaves of the toule (bulrush), and the farina is prepared in various ways. It is an Aztec preparation par excellence, for so long back as 1625 they were sold on the marketplace of the Mexican capital. They form the chief food of the Indians, who consider them as great a dainty as the Chinese do their swallow nests, with which this article of food has a certain resemblance in taste. Valentine had taken a third bite at his hautle cake when he stopped, with his arm raised and his head bent forward, as if an unusual sound had suddenly smitten his ear. Curumilla imitated his friend, and both listened with that deep attention that only results from a lengthened desert life; for on the prairie every sound is suspicious – every meeting is feared, especially with man.

Some time elapsed ere the noise which startled the hunters was repeated. For a moment they fancied themselves deceived, and Valentine took another bite, when he was again checked. This time he had distinctly heard a sound resembling a stifled sigh, but so weak and hollow that it needed the Trail-hunter's practised ear to catch it. Curumilla himself had perceived nothing. He looked at his friend in amazement, not knowing to what he should attribute his state of agitation. Valentine rose hurriedly, seized his rifle, and rushed in the direction of the river, his friend following him in all haste.

It was from the river, in fact, that the sigh heard by Valentine had come, and fortunately it was but a few paces distant. So soon as the hunters had leaped over the intervening bushes they found themselves on the bank, and a fearful sight presented itself to their startled eyes. A long plank was descending the river, turning on its axis, and borne by the current, which ran rather strongly at this point. On this plank was fastened a woman, who held a child in her clasped arms. Each time the plank revolved the unhappy woman plunged with her child into the stream, and at ten yards at the most from it an enormous cayman was swimming vigorously to snap at its two victims.

Valentine raised his rifle. Curumilla at the same moment glided into the water, holding his knife blade between his teeth, and swam toward the plank. Valentine remained for a few seconds motionless, as if changed into a block of marble. All at once he pulled the trigger, and the discharge was re-echoed by the distant mountains. The cayman leaped out of the water, and plunged down again; but it reappeared a moment later, belly upwards. It was dead. Valentine's bullet had passed through its eye.

In the meanwhile Curumilla, had reached the plank with a few strokes, without loss of time he turned it in the opposite direction from what it was following; and while holding it so that it could not revolve, he pushed it onto the sand. In two strokes he cut the bonds that held the hapless woman, seized her in his arms, and ran off with her to the bivouac fire.

The poor woman gave no signs of life, and the two hunters eagerly sought to restore her. She was an Indian, apparently not more than eighteen, and very beautiful. Valentine found great difficulty in loosening her arms and removing the baby; for the frail creature about a year old, by an incomprehensible miracle, had been preserved – thanks, doubtless to its mother's devotion. It smiled pleasantly at the hunter when he laid it on a bed of dry leaves.

Curumilla opened the woman's mouth slightly with his knife blade, placed in it the mouth of his gourd, and made her swallow a few drops of mezcal. A long time elapsed ere she gave the slightest move that indicated an approaching return to life. The hunters, however, would not be foiled by the ill-success of their attentions, but redoubled their efforts. At length a deep sigh burst painfully from the sufferer's oppressed chest, and she opened her eyes, murmuring in a voice weak as a breath!

"Xocoyotl (My child)!"

The cry of the soul – this first and supreme appeal of a mother on the verge of the tomb – affected the two men with their hearts of bronze. Valentine cautiously lifted the child, which had gone to sleep peacefully on the leaves, and presented it to the mother, saying in a soft voice:

"Nantli joltinemi (Mother, he lives)!"

At these words, which restored her hope, the woman leaped up as if moved by a spring, seized the child, and covered it with kisses, as she burst into tears. The hunters respected this outpouring of maternal love: they withdrew, leaving food and water by the woman's side. At sunset the two men returned. The woman was squatting by the fire, nursing her child, and lulling it to sleep by singing an Indian song. The night passed tranquilly, the two hunters watching in turn over the slumbers of the woman they had saved, and who reposed in peace.

At sunrise she awoke; and, with the skill and handiness peculiar to the women of her race, she rekindled the fire and prepared breakfast. The two men looked at her with a smile, then threw their rifles over their shoulders, and set out in search of game. When they returned to the bivouac the meal was ready. After eating, Valentine lit his Indian pipe, seated himself at the foot of a tree, and addressed the young woman.

"What is my sister's name?" he asked.

"Tonameyotl (the Sunbeam)," she replied, with a joyous smile that revealed the double row of pearls that adorned her mouth.

"My sister has a pretty name," Valentine answered. "She doubtless belongs to the great nation of the Apaches."

"The Apaches are dogs," she said in a hollow voice, and with a flash of hatred in her glance. "The Comanche women will weave them petticoats. The Apaches are cowardly as the coyotes: they only fight a hundred against one. The Comanche warriors are like the tempest."

"Is my sister the wife of a cacique?"

"Where is the warrior who does not know Unicorn?" she said proudly.

Valentine bowed. He had already heard the name of this terrible chief pronounced several times. Mexicans and Indians, trappers, hunters, and warriors, all felt for him a respect mingled with terror.

"Sunbeam is Unicorn's wife," the Indian girl continued.

"Good!" Valentine answered. "My sister will tell me where to find the village of her tribe, and I will lead her back to the chief."

The young woman smiled.

"I have in my heart a small bird that sings at every instant of the day," she said in her gentle and melodious voice. "The swallow cannot live without its mate, and the chief is on the trail of Sunbeam."

"We will wait the chief here, then," Valentine said.

The hunter felt great pleasure in conversing with this simple child.

"How was my sister thus fastened to the trunk of tree, and thrown into the current of the Gila, to perish there with her child? It is an atrocious vengeance."

"Yes, it is the vengeance of an Apache dog," she answered. "Aztatl (the Heron), daughter of Stanapat, the great chief of the Apaches, loved Unicorn – her heart bounded at the mere name of the great Comanche warrior; but the chief of my nation has only one heart, and it belongs to Sunbeam. Two days ago the warriors of my tribe set out for a great buffalo hunt, and the squaws alone remained in the village. While I slept in my hut four Apache thieves, taking advantage of my slumber, seized me and my child, and delivered us into the hands of Stanapat's daughter. 'You love your husband,' she said with a grin: 'you doubtless suffer at being separated from him. Be happy: I will send you to him by the shortest road. He is hunting on the prairies down the river, and in two hours you will be in his arms, unless,' she added with a laugh, 'the caymans stop you on the road.' – 'The Comanche women despise death,' I answered her. 'For a hair you pluck from me, Unicorn will take the scalps of your whole tribe; so act as you think proper;' and I turned my head away, resolved to answer her no more. She herself fastened me to the log, with my face turned to the sky, in order, as she said, that I might see my road; and then she hurled me into the river, yelling: 'Unicorn is a cowardly rabbit, whom the Apache women despise. This is how I revenge myself.' I have told my brother, the pale hunter, everything as it happened."

"My sister is a brave woman," Valentine replied: "she is worthy to be the wife of a renowned chief."

The young mother smiled as she embraced her child, which she presented, with a movement full of grace, to the hunter, who kissed it on the forehead. At this moment the song of the maukawis was heard at a short distance off. The two hunters raised their heads in surprise, and looked around them.

"The quail sings very late, I fancy," Valentine muttered suspiciously.

The Indian girl smiled as she looked down, but gave no answer. Suddenly a slight cracking of dry branches disturbed the silence. Valentine and Curumilla made a move, as if to spring up and seize their rifles that lay by their side.

"My brothers must not stir," the squaw said quickly: "it is a friend."

The hunters remained motionless, and the girl then imitated with rare perfection the cry of the blue jay. The bushes parted, and an Indian warrior, perfectly painted and armed for war, bounded like a jackal over the grass and herbs that obstructed his passage, and stopped in face of the hunters. This warrior was Unicorn. He saluted the two men with that grace innate in the Indian race; then he crossed his arms on his breast and waited, without taking a glance at his squaw, or even appearing to have seen her. On her side the Indian woman did not stir.

During several moments a painful silence fell on the four persons whom chance had assembled in so strange a way. At length Valentine, seeing the warrior insisted on being silent, decided he would be the first to speak.

"Unicorn is welcome to our camp," he said. "Let him take a seat by the fire of his brothers, and share with them the provisions they possess."

"I will take a seat by the fire of my paleface brother," he replied; "but he must first answer me a question I wish to ask of him."

"My brother can speak: my ears are open."

"Good!" the chief answered. "How is it the hunters have with them Unicorn's wife?"

"Sunbeam can answer that question best," Valentine said gravely.

The chief turned to his squaw.

"I am waiting," he remarked.

The Indian woman repeated, word for word, to her husband the story she had told a few minutes before. Unicorn listened without evincing either surprise or wrath: his face remained impassive, but his brows were imperceptibly contracted. When the woman had finished speaking, the Comanche chief bowed his head on his chest, and remained for a moment plunged in serious thought. Presently he raised his head.

"Who saved Sunbeam from the river when she was about to perish?" he asked her.

The young woman's face lit up with a charming smile.

"These hunters," she replied.

"Good!" the chief said, laconically, as he bent on the two men glances full of the most unspeakable gratitude.

"Could we leave her to perish?" Valentine said.

"My brothers did well. Unicorn is one of the first sachems of his nation. His tongue is not forked: he gives his heart once, and takes it back no more. Unicorn's heart belongs to the hunters."

These simple words were uttered with the majesty and grandeur the Indians know so well how to assume when they think proper. The two men vowed their gratitude, and the chief continued: —

"Unicorn is returning to his village with his wife: his young men are awaiting him twenty paces from here. He would be happy if the hunters would consent to accompany him there."

"Chief," Valentine answered, "we came into the prairie to hunt the buffalo."

"Well, what matter? My brothers will hunt with me and my young men; but if they wish to prove to me that they accept my friendship, they will follow me to my village."

"The chief is mounted, while we are on foot."

"I have horses."

Any further resistance would have been a breach of politeness, and the hunters accepted the invitation. Valentine, whom accident had brought on to the prairies of the Rio Gila and Del Norte, was in his heart not sorry to make friends there, and have allies on whose support he could reckon in case of need. The squaw had by this time risen: she timidly approached her husband, and held up the child, saying in a soft and frightened voice, —

"Kiss this warrior."

The chief took the frail creature in his muscular arms, and kissed it repeatedly with a display of extraordinary tenderness, and then returned it to the mother. The latter wrapped the babe in a small blanket, then placed it on a plank shaped like a cradle, and covered with dry moss, fastened a hoop over the place where its head rested, to guard it from the burning beams of the sun, and hung the whole on her back by means of a woolen strap passing over her forehead.

"I am ready," she said.

"Let us go," the chief replied.

The hunters followed him, and they were soon on the prairie.