The Border Rifles Part 54

As he had warned him, the Captain intimated to the guide that he was to ride by his side, and, so far as was possible, did not let him out of sight for a second.

The latter did not appear at all troubled by this annoying inquisition; he rode along quite as gaily as heretofore, smoking his husk cigarette, and whistling fragments of jarabes between his teeth.

The forest began gradually to grow clearer, the openings became more numerous, and the eye embraced a wider horizon; all led to the presumption that they would soon reach the limits of the covert.

Still, the ground began rising slightly on both sides, and the path the conducta followed grew more and more hollow, in proportion as it advanced.

"Are we already reaching the spurs of the mountains?" the Captain asked.

"Oh, no, not yet," the guide answered.

"Still we shall soon be between two hills?"

"Yes, but of no height."

"That is true; still, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to pa.s.s through a defile."

"Yes, but of no great length."

"You should have warned me of it."

"Why so?"

"That I might have sent some scouts ahead."

"That is true, but there is still time to do so if you like; the persons who are waiting for us are at the end of that gorge."

"Then we have arrived?"

"Very nearly so."

"Let us push on in that case."

"I am quite ready."

They went on; all at once the guide stopped.

"Hilloh!" he said, "Look over there, Captain; is not that a musket barrel glistening in the sunbeams?"

The Captain sharply turned his eyes in the direction indicated by the soldier.

At the same moment a frightful discharge burst forth from either side of the way, and a shower of bullets poured on the conducta.

Before the Captain, ferocious at this shameful treachery, could draw a pistol from his belt, he rolled on the ground, dragged down by his horse, which had a ball right through its heart.

The guide had disappeared, and it was impossible to discover how he had escaped.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

JOHN DAVIS.

John Davis, the ex-slave dealer, had too powerful nerves for the scenes he had witnessed this day, and in which he had even played a very active and dangerous part, to leave any durable impressions on his mind.

After quitting Blue-fox, he galloped on for some time in the direction where he expected to find the Jaguar; but gradually he yielded to his thoughts, and his horse, understanding with that admirable instinct which distinguishes these n.o.ble animals, that its rider was paying no attention to it, gradually reduced its pace, pa.s.sing from the gallop to a trot, and then to a foot-pace, walking with its head down, and snapping at a few blades of gra.s.s as it pa.s.sed.

John Davis was considerably perplexed by the conduct of one of the persons with whom accident had brought him in contact on this morning so fertile in events of every description. The person who had the privilege of arousing the American's attention to no eminent degree was the White Scalper.

The heroic struggle sustained by this man alone against a swarm of obstinate enemies, his herculean strength, the skill with which he managed his horse--all in this strange man seemed to him to border on the marvellous.

During bivouac watches on the prairie he had frequently heard the most extraordinary and exaggerated stories told about this hunter by the Indians with, a terror, the reason of which he comprehended, now that he had seen the man; for this individual who laughed at weapons directed against his chest, and ever emerged safe and sound from the combats he engaged in, seemed rather a demon than a being appertaining to humanity.

John Davis felt himself shudder involuntarily at this thought, and congratulated himself in having so miraculously escaped the danger he had incurred in his encounter with the Scalper.

We will mention, in pa.s.sing, that no people in the world are more superst.i.tious than the North Americans. This is easy to understand: this nation--a perfect harlequin's garb--is an heterogeneous composite of all the races that people the old world; each of the representatives of these races arrived in America, bearing in his emigrants' baggage not only his vices and pa.s.sions, but also his creed and his superst.i.tions, which are the wildest, most absurd, and puerile possible. This was the more easily effected, because the ma.s.s of emigrants, who have at various periods sought a refuge in America, was composed of people for the most part devoid of all learning, or even of a semblance of education; from this point of view, the North Americans, we must do them the justice of saying, have not at all degenerated; they are at the present day at least as ignorant and brutal as were their ancestors.

It is easy to imagine the strange number of legends about sorcerers and phantoms which are current in North America. These legends, preserved by tradition, pa.s.sing from mouth to mouth, and with time becoming mingled one with the other, have necessarily been heightened in a country where the grand aspect of nature renders the mind p.r.o.ne to reverie and melancholy.

Hence John Davis, though he flattered himself he was a strong-minded man, did not fail, like all his countrymen, to possess a strong dose of credulity; and this man, who would not have recoiled at the sight of several muskets pointed at his breast, felt himself shiver with fear at the sound of a leaf falling at night on his shoulder.

Moreover, so soon as the idea occurred to John Davis that the White Scalper was a demon, or, at the very least, a sorcerer, it got hold of him, and this supposition straightway became an article of belief with him. Naturally, he found himself at once relieved by this discovery; his ideas returned to their usual current, and the anxiety that occupied his mind disappeared as if by enchantment; henceforth his opinion was formed about this man, and if accident again brought them face to face, he would know how to behave to him.

Happy at having at length found this solution, he gaily raised his head, and took a long searching look around him at the landscape he was riding through.

He was nearly in the centre of a vast rolling prairie, covered with tall gra.s.s, and with a few clumps of mahogany and pine trees scattered here and there.

Suddenly he rose in his stirrups, placed his hand as a shade over his eyes, and looked attentively.

About half a mile from the spot where he had halted, and a little to the right, that is to say, exactly in the direction he intended to follow himself, he noticed a thin column of smoke, which rose from the middle of a thicket of aloe and larch trees.

On the desert, smoke seen by the wayside always furnishes ample matter for reflection.

Smoke generally rises from a fire round which several persons are seated.

Now man, in this more unfortunate than the wild beasts, fears before all else on the prairie meeting with his fellow-man, for he may wager a hundred to one that the man he meets will prove an enemy.

Still John Davis, after ripe consideration, resolved to push on toward the fire; since morning he had been fasting, hunger was beginning to p.r.i.c.k him, and in addition he felt excessively fatigued; he therefore inspected his weapons with the most scrupulous attention, so as to be able to have recourse to them if necessary, and digging the spur into his horse's flank, he went on boldly toward the smoke, while carefully watching the neighbourhood for fear of a surprise.

At the end of ten minutes he reached his destination; but when fifty yards from the clump of trees, he checked the speed of his horse, and laid his rifle across the saddle-bow; his face lost the anxious expression which had covered it, and he advanced toward the fire with a smile on his lips, and the most friendly air imaginable.

In the midst of a thick clump of trees, whose protecting shade offered a comfortable shelter to a weary traveller, a man dressed in the costume of a Mexican dragoon was lazily seated in front of a fire, over which his meat was cooking, while himself smoked a husk cigarette. A long lance decorated with its guidon leaned against a larch tree close to him, and a completely harnessed horse, from which the bit had, however, been removed, was peaceably nibbling the tree shoots and the tender prairie gra.s.s.

This man seemed to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age; his cunning features were lit up by small sharp eyes, and the copper tinge of his skin denoted his Indian origin.

He had for a long time seen the horseman coming toward his camp, but he appeared to attach but slight importance to it, and quietly went on smoking and watching the cooking of his meal, not taking any further precaution against the unforeseen visitor than a.s.suring himself that his sabre came easily out of its scabbard. When he was only a few paces from the soldier, John Davis stopped and raised his hand to his hat.