The Trapper's Daughter Part 41

And he at once began walking round the platform. It was much larger than the one they had just left, and at its extremity began the virgin, forest, which descended with a gentle incline to the bottom of the barranca. When Valentine had examined the place, he returned to his comrades, shaking his head.

"What is the matter?" Don Pablo asked; "Have you seen anything suspicious?"

"Hum!" Valentine answered; "I am greatly mistaken, or the lair of a wild beast is somewhere close by."

"A wild beast!" Don Miguel exclaimed; "What, at this elevation?"

"Yes, and it is that very fact which makes me anxious; the traces are wide and deep. Look for yourself, Curumilla," he added, turning to the Indian, and pointing at the spot where he should proceed. Without replying, the Ulmen stooped down, and attentively examined the footprints.

"What animal do you think we have to deal with?" Don Miguel asked.

"A grizzly," Valentine answered.

The grizzly bear is the most terrible and justly feared animal in America. The Mexicans could not repress a start of terror on hearing the name of this terrible adversary p.r.o.nounced.

"But here's the chief returning," Valentine added. "All our doubts will be cleared up. Well, chief, to what does that sign belong?"

"Grizzly," Curumilla laconically answered.

"I was sure of it," said Valentine; "and what is t more, the animal is large."

"Very large; the footmarks are eight inches wide."

"Oh, oh," Don Miguel said, "we have a rough companion in that case. But in what state is the sign, chief?"

"Quite fresh; the animal pa.s.sed scarce an hour ago."

"By Jove!" Valentine suddenly shouted, "here is its lair."

And he pointed to a large yawning hole in the mountain side. The hunters gave a start.

"Gentlemen," Valentine went on, "you are no more anxious than myself to measure your strength with a grizzly, I suppose."

"Certainly not," the Mexican exclaimed.

"If you will follow my advice we will not remain any longer here; the animal, I suspect, has gone down to drink, and will speedily return; let us not wait for it, but profit by its absence to be off."

The three men enthusiastically applauded the hunter's proposal; for, although of tried bravery, the contest appeared to them so disproportionate with this redoubtable adversary, that they did not at all desire to come face to face with it.

"Let us be off," they eagerly shouted.

Suddenly the sound of breaking branches was audible in the forest, and a formidable growling troubled the silence of night.

"It is too late," Valentine said; "here is the enemy, the fight will be a tough one."

The hunters leaned against the wall of rock, side by side, and in a few moments the hideous head of the grizzly appeared among the trees on a level with the platform.

"We are lost," Don Miguel muttered as he c.o.c.ked his rifle; "for any flight from this rock is impossible."

"Who knows?" Valentine answered. "Heaven has done so much for us up to the present, that we should be ungrateful to suppose that we shall be abandoned in this new peril."

[Footnote 1: This episode, incredible as it may appear, is rigorously true.--G.A.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CAMP IN THE MOUNTAINS.

On leaving the jacal, Red Cedar proceeded towards the mountains. The squatter was one of those old hands to whom all the tracks of the desert are known. From the few words uttered by Father Seraphin, and the haste he had shown in coming to warn him, Red Cedar understood that this time the final contest was about to begin, without truce or pity, in which his enemies would employ all their knowledge and skill to finish with him once for all.

He had been fortunate enough to reach the Sierra de los Comanches soon enough to be able, to efface his trail. During a month he and Valentine had carried on one of those incredible campaigns of skill and boldness in which each employed every scheme his fertile mind suggested to deceive his adversary.

As frequently happens under such circ.u.mstances, Red Cedar, who at the outset only accepted unwillingly the struggle into which he was forced, had gradually felt his old wood ranger instincts aroused. His pride had been excited, for he knew he had to deal with Valentine, that is to say, the cleverest hunter on the prairie, and he had consequently displayed a degree of skill that surprised himself, in order to prove to his terrible adversary that he was not unworthy of him.

For a whole month the two had been unsuccessfully manoeuvring within a circle of less than ten leagues, constantly turning round one another, and often only separated by a screen of foliage, or a ravine. But this contest must have an end sooner or later, Red Cedar felt, and being no longer sustained by the same pa.s.sions which formerly served as the motive of all his actions, despondency was beginning to seize upon him, the more so, because physical pain had been recently joined to his moral sufferings, and threatened to deal him the final blow. Let us see in what condition Red Cedar was at the moment when the exigencies of our story compel us to return to him.

It was about eight o'clock in the evening; three men and a girl, a.s.sembled round a scanty fire of _bois de vache_, were warming themselves, and, at times, casting a dull glance at the gloomy gorges of the surrounding mountains. These four persons were Nathan, Sutter, Fray Ambrosio, and Ellen.

The spot where they found themselves was one of those narrow ravines, the bed of dried torrents, so many of which are met with in the Sierra de los Comanches. On the flanks of the ravine was a thick chaparral, the commencement of a gloomy virgin forest, from the mysterious depths of which could be heard at intervals the lengthened howling and roar of wild beasts.

The situation of the fugitives was most critical, and even desperate.

Shut up for a month amid these arid mountains, tracked on all sides, they had hitherto only escaped their persecutors through the immense sacrifices and the prodigious craft displayed by Red Cedar. The pursuit had been so active, that, being constantly on the point of being surprised by their enemies, they did not dare kill the few head of game they came across. A shot, by revealing the direction in which they were, would have been sufficient to betray them.

In the meanwhile, the scanty stock of food they had brought with them from the jacal, in spite of their saving, had been consumed, and hunger, but before all, thirst, was beginning to be felt. Of all the scourges that afflict hapless travellers, thirst is indubitably the most terrible. Hunger may be endured during a certain length of time, without excessive suffering, especially at the end of a few days; but thirst occasions atrocious pain, which, after a while, produces a species of furious madness; the palate is parched, the throat is on fire, the eyes are suffused with blood, and the wretched man, a prey to a horrible delirium, which makes him see the desired water everywhere, at length dies in atrocious agony, which nothing can calm.

When their provisions were exhausted, they were compelled to procure others; but in the mountains that was almost impossible, as the fugitives were deprived of their freedom of action. For a few days they continued to support life on roots, and small birds caught in a snare; but unfortunately, the cold became daily sharper, and the birds withdrew to warmer regions; hence they were deprived of this resource.

The little water remaining was by common agreement reserved for Ellen.

The maiden declined to accept this sacrifice, but thirst grew upon her with every moment, and, overcome by the entreaties of her companions, she eventually accepted it. The others found no other way of quenching the thirst that devoured them, than slitting the ears of their horses and drinking the blood as it ran. Next, they killed a horse, for the poor brutes found no more food than did their masters. The roasted flesh of this horse enabled them to pa.s.s a few days: in short, all four horses were eaten one after the other.

Now, nothing was left the adventurers, and for two days they had nothing to eat. Hence they maintained a mournful silence, exchanging stern glances, and plunging deeper and deeper into sinister reflections.

They felt their senses gradually leaving them and madness seizing on them; they felt the moment approaching when they would be no longer masters of their reason, and become the prey of the fearful calenture, which already pressed their temples as in a vice, and made the most startling images glitter before their fever-dried eyes.

It was a heart-breaking sight to see these three men, round the expiring fire, in this stern desert, lying without strength and almost without courage by the side of the maiden, who, with clasped hands and downcast eyes, prayed in a low voice.

Time pa.s.sed; the wind howled mournfully in the quebradas; the moon, half veiled by a ma.s.s of vapour, only emitted at intervals its pallid rays, which fantastically illumined the scene of desolation, whose sinister silence was only disturbed by a suppressed oath or a groan drawn forth by pain. Ellen raised her head, and looked compa.s.sionately at her companions.

"Courage," she murmured in her gentle voice, "courage, brothers! G.o.d cannot abandon us thus."

A nervous groan was the only reply she obtained.

"Alas!" she continued, "Instead of, then yielding to despair, why not pray, brothers? It gives strength and restores hope."