"Well!" the first hunter said laconically between two puffs of tobacco.
"You were right," the other replied.
"Ah!"
"Yes, we have kept too much to the right, it was that which made us lose the scent."
"I was sure of it," the first speaker replied; "you see, Belhumeur, you trust too much to your Canadian habits: the Indians with whom we have to do here in no way resemble the Iroquois, who visit the hunting grounds of your country."
Belhumeur nodded his head in sign of acquiescence.
"After all," the other continued, "this is of very little importance at this moment; what is urgent is to know who are our thieves."
"I know."
"Good!" the other said, withdrawing his pipe quickly from his mouth; "and who are the Indians who have dared to steal the traps marked with my cipher?"
"The Comanches."
"I suspected as much. By heavens, ten of our best traps stolen during the night! I swear, Belhumeur, that they shall pay for them dearly! And where are the Comanches at this moment?"
"Within three leagues of us at most. It is a party of plunderers composed of a dozen men; according to the direction they are following, they are turning to their mountains."
"They shall not all arrive there," said the hunter, casting a glance at his rifle.
"Parbleu!" said Belhumeur with a loud laugh, "they will only get what they deserve. I leave it to you, Loyal Heart, to punish them for their insult; but you will be still more determined to avenge yourself upon them when you know by whom they are commanded."
"Ah! ah! I know their chief then?"
Belhumeur said, slightly smiling, "it is Nehu Nutah."
"Eagle Head!" cried Loyal, almost bounding from his seat. "Oh, oh! yes, I know him, and God grant that this time. I may settle the old account there is between us. His moccasins have long enough trodden the same path with me and barred my passage."
After pronouncing these word with an accent of hatred that made Belhumeur shudder, the hunter, sorry at having allowed the anger which mastered him to appear, resumed his pipe and continued to smoke with a feigned carelessness that did not at all impose upon his companion.
The conversation was interrupted.
The two hunters appeared to be absorbed in profound reflections, and smoked silently by the side of each other.
At length Belhumeur turned towards his companion.
"Shall I watch?" he asked.
"No," Loyal Heart replied, in a low voice; "sleep, I will be sentinel for you and myself too."
Belhumeur, without making the least observation, laid himself down by the fire, and in a few minutes slept profoundly.
When the owl hooted its matin song, which seemed to salute the speedy appearance of the sun, Loyal Heart, who during the night had remained motionless as a marble statue, awakened his companion.
"It is time," said he.
"Very good!" Belhumeur replied, rising immediately.
The hunters saddled their horses, descended the hill with precaution, and galloped off upon the track of the Comanches.
At this moment the sun appeared radiant in the heavens, dissipating the darkness and illuminating the prairie with its magnificent and reviving radiance.
CHAPTER II.
THE HUNTERS
A few words now about the personages we have just brought upon the scene, and who are destined to play an important part in this history.
Loyal Heart – this name was the only one by which the hunter was known throughout the prairies of the West – enjoyed an immense reputation for skill, loyalty, and courage among the Indian tribes, with whom the chances of his adventurous existence had brought him in relation. All respected him. The white hunters and trappers, whether Spaniards, North Americans, or half-breeds, had a high opinion of his experience of the woods, and often had recourse to his counsels.
The pirates of the prairies themselves, thorough food for the gallows, the refuse of civilization, who only lived by rapine and exactions, did not dare to attack him, and avoided as much as possible throwing themselves in his way.
Thus this man had succeeded by the sheer force of his intelligence and his will, in creating for himself, and almost unknown to himself, a power accepted and recognized by the ferocious inhabitants of these vast deserts, – a power which he only employed in the common interest, and to facilitate for all the means of following in safety the occupations they had adopted.
No one knew who Loyal Heart was, or whence he came; the greatest mystery covered his early years.
One day, about twenty years before, when he was very young, some hunters had fallen in with him on the banks of the Arkansas in the act of setting traps for beavers. The few questions put to him concerning his preceding life remained unanswered; and the hunters, people not very talkative by nature, fancying they perceived, from the embarrassment and reticence of the young man, that he had a secret which he desired to keep, made a scruple about pressing him further – and nothing more was said on the subject.
At the same time, contrary to other hunters, or trappers of the prairies, who have all one or two companions with whom they associate, and whom they never leave, Loyal Heart lived alone, having no fixed habitation; he traversed the desert in all directions without pitching his tent anywhere.
Always reserved and melancholy, he avoided the society of his equals, although always ready, when occasion offered, to render them services, or even to expose his life for them. Then, when they attempted to express their gratitude, he would clap spurs to his horse, and go and set his traps at a distance, to give time to those he had obliged to forget the service he had rendered.
Every year, at the same period, that is to say, about the month of October, Loyal Heart disappeared for several entire weeks, without anyone being able to suspect whither he was gone; and when he returned it was observed that for several days his countenance was more dark and sad than ever.
One day he came back from one of these mysterious expeditions, accompanied by two magnificent young bloodhounds, which had from that time remained with him, and of which he seemed very fond.
Five years before the period at which we resume our narrative, when returning one evening from laying his traps for the night, he suddenly perceived the fire of an Indian camp through the trees.
A white youth, scarcely seventeen years of age, was fastened to a stake, and served as mark for the knives of the redskins, who amused themselves with torturing him before they sacrificed him to their sanguinary rage.
Loyal Heart, listening to nothing but the pity which the victim inspired, and without reflecting on the terrible danger to which he exposed himself, rushed in among the Indians, and placed himself in front of the prisoner, for whom he made a rampart of his body.
These Indians were Comanches. Astonished by this sudden irruption, which they were far from expecting, they remained a few instants motionless, confounded by so much audacity.
Without losing a moment, Loyal Heart cut the bonds of the prisoner, and giving him a knife, which the other received with joy, they both prepared to sell their lives dearly.
White men inspire Indians with an instinctive, an invincible terror; the Comanches, however, on recovering from their surprise, showed signs of rushing forward to attack the two men who seemed to defy them.
But the light of the fire, which fell full upon the face of the hunter, had permitted some of them to recognize him. The