Part 57 (1/2)

The Indian bowed and folded his arms on his chest. A quarter of an hour later, the hunters reached the encampment of the redskins, when they found that Black Cat had spoken the truth, for he had one hundred picked warriors with him, so cleverly concealed in the gra.s.s that ten paces off it was impossible to perceive them.

Black Cat drew Valentine aside, and led him a short distance from the bivouac.

”Let my brother look,” he said.

The hunter then saw, a little way off, the fires of the gambusinos. Red Cedar had placed his camp against a hillside, which prevented the hunters seeing it. The squatter fancied he had thrown Valentine out, and this night, for the first time since he knew he was pursued, he allowed his people to light a fire.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE COMBAT.

Red Cedar's camp was plunged in silence; all were asleep, save three or four gambusinos who watched over the safety of their comrades, and two persons who, carelessly reclining before a tent erected in the centre of the camp, were conversing in a low voice. They were Red Cedar and Fray Ambrosio.

The squatter seemed suffering from considerable anxiety; with his eye fixed on s.p.a.ce, he seemed to be sounding the darkness and guessing the secrets which the night that surrounded him bore in its bosom.

”Gossip,” the monk said, ”do you believe that we have succeeded in hiding our trail from the white hunters?”

”Those villains are dogs at whom I laugh; my wife would suffice to drive them away with a whip,” Red Cedar replied, disdainfully; ”I know all the windings of the prairie, and have acted for the best.”

”Then, we are at length freed from our enemies,” the monk said, with a sigh of relief.

”Yes, gossip,” the squatter remarked with a grin; ”now you can sleep calmly.”

”Ah,” said the monk, ”all the better.”

At this moment, a bullet whistled over the Spaniard's head, and flattened against one of the tent poles.

”Malediction!” the squatter yelled, as he sprang up; ”those mad wolves again. To arms, lads; here are the redskins.”

Within a few seconds, all the gambusinos were alert and ambuscaded behind the bales that formed the wall of the camp. At the same moment, fearful yells, followed by a terrible discharge, burst forth from the prairie.

The squatter's band comprised about twenty resolute men, with the pirates he had enlisted. The gambusinos did not let themselves be terrified; they replied by a point-blank discharge at a numerous band of hors.e.m.e.n galloping at full speed on the camp. The Indians rode in every direction, uttering ferocious yells, and brandis.h.i.+ng burning torches which they constantly hurled into the camp.

The Indians, as a general rule, only attack their enemies by surprise; when they have no other object in view but pillage, as soon as they are discovered and meet with a vigorous resistance, they cease a combat which has become objectless to them. But on this occasion the redskins seemed to have given up their ordinary tactics, so obstinately did they a.s.sail the gambusino intrenchments; frequently repulsed, they returned with renewed ardour, fighting in the open and trying to crush their enemies by their numbers.

Red Cedar, terrified by the duration of a combat in which his bravest comrades had perished, resolved to attempt a final effort, and conquer the Indians by daring and temerity. By a signal he collected his three sons around him, with Andres Garote and Fray Ambrosio; but the Indians did not leave them the time to carry out the plan they had formed; they returned to the charge with incredible fury, and a cloud of incendiary arrows and lighted torches fell on the camp from all sides at once.

The fire added its horrors to those of the combat, and ere long the camp was a burning fiery furnace. The redskins, cleverly profiting by the disorder the fire caused among the gambusinos, escaladed the bales, invaded the camp, rushed on the whites, and a hand-to-hand fight commenced. In spite of their courage and skill in the use of arms, the gambusinos were overwhelmed by the ma.s.ses of their enemies; a few minutes longer, and all would be over with Red Cedar's band.

The squatter resolved to make a supreme effort to save the few men still left him; taking Fray Ambrosio aside, who, since the beginning the action, had constantly fought by his side, he explained his intentions to him; and when he felt that the monk would certainly carry out his plans, he rushed with incredible fury into the thickest of the fight, and felling or stabbing the redskins who stood in his way, succeeded in entering the tent.

Dona Clara, with her head stretched forward, seemed to be anxiously listening to the noises outside. Two paces from her, the squatter's wife was dying; a bullet had pa.s.sed through her skull. On seeing Red Cedar, the maiden folded her arms on her bosom, and wailed.

”_Voto a Dios!_” the brigand exclaimed. ”She is still here. Follow me, senora, we must be off.”

”No,” the Spaniard answered, resolutely. ”I will not go.”

”Come, child, obey; do not oblige me to employ violence; time is precious.”