Chapter Seventeen.
On the Trail.
It is the day succeeding that on which the hunter-naturalist was carried home a corpse, sitting upright in his saddle. The sun has gone down over the Gran Chaco, and its vast grassy plains and green palm-groves are again under the purple of twilight. Herds of stately quazutis and troops of the pampas roebuck—beautiful creatures, spotted like fawns of the fallow-deer—move leisurely towards their watering-places, having already browsed to satiety on pastures where they are but rarely disturbed by the hunter, for here no sound of horse nor baying of molossian ever breaks the stillness of the early morn, and the only enemies they have habitually to dread are the red puma and yellow jaguar, throughout Spanish America respectively, but erroneously, named lion (leon) and tiger (tigre), from a resemblance, though a very slight one, which these, the largest of the New World’s felidae, bear to their still grander congeners of the Old.
The scene we are about to depict is upon the Pilcomayo’s bank, some twenty miles above the old tomeria of the Tovas Indians, and therefore thirty from the house of Ludwig Halberger—now his no more, but a house of mourning. The mourners, however, are not all in it, for by a camp-fire freshly kindled at the place we speak of; two of them are seen seated. One is the son of the murdered man, the other his nephew; while not far off is a third individual, who mourns almost as much as either. Need I say it is Caspar, the gaucho?
Or is it necessary to give explanation of their being thus far from home so soon after that sad event, the cause of their sorrow? No. The circumstances speak for themselves; telling than to be there on an errand connected with that same crime; in short, in pursuit of the criminals.
Who these may be they have as yet no definite knowledge. All is but blind conjectures, the only thing certain being that the double crime has been committed by Indians; for the trail which has conducted to the spot they are now on, first coming down the river’s bank to the branch stream, then over its ford and back again, could have been made only by a mounted party of red men.
But of what tribe? That is the question which puzzles them. Not the only one, however. Something besides causes them surprise, equally perplexing them. Among the other hoof-marks, they have observed some that must have been made by a horse with shoes on; and as they know the Chaco Indians never ride such, the thing strikes them as very strange. It would not so much, were the shod-tracks only traceable twice along the trail; that is, coming down the river and returning up again, for they might suppose that one of the savages was in possession of a white man’s horse, stolen from some of the settlements, a thing of no uncommon occurrence. But then they have here likewise observed a third set of these tracks, of older date, also going up, and a fourth, freshest of all, returning down again; the last on top of everything else, continuing on to the old tolderia, as they have noticed all the way since leaving it.
And in their examination of the many hoof-marks by the force of the tributary stream, up to the sumac thicket—and along the tapir path to that blood-stained spot which they have just visited—the same tracks are conspicuous amid all the others, telling that he who rode the shod horse has had a hand in the murder, and likely a leading one.
It is the gaucho who has made most of these observations, but about the deductions to be drawn from them, he is, for the time, as much at fault as either of his younger companions.
They have just arrived at their present halting-place, their first camp since leaving the estancia; from which they parted a little before mid-day: soon as the sad, funeral rites were over, and the body of the murdered man laid in its grave. This done at an early hour of the morning, for the hot climate of the Chaco calls for quick interment.
The sorrowing wife did nought to forbid their departure. She had her sorrows as a mother, too; and, instead of trying to restrain, she but urged them to take immediate action in searching for her lost child.
That Francesca is still living they all believe, and so long as there seemed a hope—even the slightest—of recovering her, the bereaved mother was willing to be left alone. Her faithful Guanos would be with her.
It needed no persuasive argument to send the searchers off. In their own minds they have enough motive for haste; and, though in each it might be different in kind, as in degree, with all it is sufficiently strong. Not one of them but is willing to risk his life in the pursuit they have entered upon; and at least one would lay it down rather than fail in finding Francesca, and restoring her to her mother.
They have followed thus far on the track of the abductors, but without any fixed or definite plan as to continuing. Indeed, there has been no time to think of one, or anything else; all hitherto acting under that impulse of anxiety for the girl’s fate which they so keenly feel. But now that the first hurried step has been taken, and they can go no further till another sun lights up the trail, calmer reflection comes, admonishing them to greater caution in their movements. For they who have so ruthlessly killed one man would as readily take other lives—their own. What they have undertaken is no mere question of skill in taking up a trail, but an enterprise full of peril; and they have need to be cautious how they proceed upon it.
They are so acting now. Their camp-fire is but a small one, just sufficient to boil a kettle of water for making the maté, and the spot where they have placed it is in a hollow, so that it may not be seen from afar. Besides, a clump of palms screens it on the western side, the direction in which the trail leads, and therefore the likeliest for them to apprehend danger.
Soon as coming to a stop, and before kindling the fire Gaspar has gone all around, and made a thorough survey of the situation. Then, satisfied it is a safe one, he undertakes the picketing of their horses, directing the others to set light to the faggots; which they have done, and seated themselves beside.