“What mean you, Cash?” inquired the uncle.
“I mean, uncle, that that fellow’s been misleading us. I won’t say it for certain; but it looks ugly. We’ve come more than five miles—six, I should say—and where’s the tree? I’ve examined the horizon, with a pair of as good eyes as most have got, I reckon; and there isn’t such a thing in sight.”
“But why should the stranger have deceived us?”
“Ah—why? That’s just it. There may be more reasons than one.”
“Give us one, then!” challenged a silvery voice from the carriole. “We’re all ears to hear it!”
“You’re all ears to take in everything that’s told you by a stranger,” sneeringly replied Calhoun. “I suppose if I gave my reason, you’d be so charitable as to call it a false alarm!”
“That depends on its character, Master Cassius. I think you might venture to try us. We scarcely expect a false alarm from a soldier, as well as traveller, of your experience.”
Calhoun felt the taunt; and would probably have withheld the communication he had intended to make, but for Poindexter himself.
“Come, Cassius, explain yourself!” demanded the planter, in a tone of respectful authority. “You have said enough to excite something more than curiosity. For what reason should the young fellow be leading us astray?”
“Well, uncle,” answered the ex-officer, retreating a little from his original accusation, “I haven’t said for certain that he is; only that it looks like it.”
“In what way?”
“Well, one don’t know what may happen. Travelling parties as strong, and stronger than we, have been attacked on these plains, and plundered of every thing—murdered.”
“Mercy!” exclaimed Louise, in a tone of terror, more affected than real.
“By Indians,” replied Poindexter.
“Ah—Indians, indeed! Sometimes it may be; and sometimes, too, they may be whites who play at that game—not all Mexican whites, neither. It only needs a bit of brown paint; a horsehair wig, with half a dozen feathers stuck into it; that, and plenty of hullabalooing. If we were to be robbed by a party of white Indians, it wouldn’t be the first time the thing’s been done. We as good as half deserve it—for our greenness, in trusting too much to a stranger.”
“Good heavens, nephew! this is a serious accusation. Do you mean to say that the despatch-rider—if he be one—is leading us into—into an ambuscade?”
“No, uncle; I don’t say that. I only say that such things have been done; and it’s possible he may.”
“But not probable,” emphatically interposed the voice from the carriole, in a tone tauntingly quizzical.
“No!” exclaimed the stripling Henry, who, although riding a few paces ahead, had overheard the conversation. “Your suspicions are unjust, cousin Cassius. I pronounce them a calumny. What’s more, I can prove them so. Look there!”
The youth had reined up his horse, and was pointing to an object placed conspicuously by the side of the path; which, before speaking, he had closely scrutinised. It was a tall plant of the columnar cactus, whose green succulent stem had escaped scathing by the fire.
It was not to the plant itself that Henry Poindexter directed the attention of his companions; but to a small white disc, of the form of a parallelogram, impaled upon one of its spines. No one accustomed to the usages of civilised life could mistake the “card.” It was one.
“Hear what’s written upon it!” continued the young man, riding nearer, and reading aloud the directions pencilled upon the bit of pasteboard.
“The cypress in sight!”
“Where?” inquired Poindexter.
“There’s a hand,” rejoined Henry, “with a finger pointing—no doubt in the direction of the tree.”
All eyes were instantly turned towards the quarter of the compass, indicated by the cipher on the card.
Had the sun been shining, the cypress might have been seen at the first glance. As it was, the sky—late of cerulean hue—was now of a leaden grey; and no straining of the eyes could detect anything along the horizon resembling the top of a tree.
“There’s nothing of the kind,” asserted Calhoun, with restored confidence, at the same time returning to his unworthy accusation. “It’s only a dodge—another link in the chain of tricks the scamp is playing us.”
“You mistake, cousin Cassius,” replied that same voice that had so often contradicted him. “Look through this lorgnette! If you haven’t lost the sight of those superior eyes of yours, you’ll see something very like a tree—a tall tree—and a cypress, too, if ever there was one in the swamps of Louisiana.”
Calhoun disdained to take the opera glass from the hands of his cousin. He knew it would convict him: for he could not suppose she was telling an untruth.
Poindexter availed himself of its aid; and, adjusting the focus to his failing sight, was enabled to distinguish the red-leafed cypress, topping up over the edge of the prairie.
“It’s true,” he said: “the tree is there. The young fellow is honest: you’ve been wronging him, Cash. I didn’t think it likely he should have taken such a queer plan to make fools of us. He there! Mr Sansom! Direct your teamsters to drive on!”
Calhoun, not caring to continue the conversation, nor yet remain longer in company, spitefully spurred his horse, and trotted off over the prairie.
“Let me look at that card, Henry?” said Louise, speaking to her brother in a restrained voice. “I’m curious to see the cipher that has been of such service to us. Bring it away, brother: it can be of no further use where it is—now that we have sighted the tree.”
Henry, without the slightest suspicion of his sister’s motive for making the request, yielded obedience to it.
Releasing the piece of pasteboard from its impalement, he “chucked” it into her lap.
“Maurice Gerald!” muttered the young Creole, after deciphering the name upon the card. “Maurice Gerald!” she repeated, in apostrophic thought, as she deposited the piece of pasteboard in her bosom. “Whoever you are—whence you have come—whither you are going—what you may be—Henceforth there is a fate between us! I feel it—I know it—sure as there’s a sky above! Oh! how that sky lowers! Am I to take it as a type of this still untraced destiny?”
Chapter Four.
The Black Norther.
For some seconds, after surrendering herself to the Sybilline thoughts thus expressed, the young lady sate in silence—her white hands clasped across her temples, as if her whole soul was absorbed in an attempt, either to explain the past, or penetrate the future.
Her reverie—whatever might be its cause—was not of long duration. She was awakened from it, on hearing exclamations without—mingled with words that declared some object of apprehension.
She recognised her brother’s voice, speaking in tones that betokened alarm.
“Look, father! don’t you see them?”
“Where, Henry—where?”
“Yonder—behind the waggons. You see them now?”
“I