As they entered the hut the girl uttered a cry of dismay, and de Sancerre strode quickly to the prostrate form of their faithful counsellor and guide. Stretched before a snapping fire of twigs, with her last earthly task undone, lay Noco, dead, the grin and wrinkles smoothed from her old, brown face by the kindly hand of eternal sleep. The strain of the night’s wild race had been too great for her brave heart, and, when called upon by the labor of the day, it had ceased to beat.
Doña Julia threw herself upon her knees beside the only friend she had known in her long captivity, and, with sobs and prayers, gave vent to the sorrow in her heart.
“Nom de Dieu! I think I loved that queer old hag!” murmured de Sancerre to himself, brushing a tear from his pale cheek, as he turned toward the wood-fire to resume the work from which Noco had been called by death. “I thought there was no limit to the vigor in her frame! Alas for her, I set the pace too hot!”
But there was no time for sighs and vain regrets. De Sancerre knew the woods too well to let his fire long toss the smoke between the fissures of the hut. Removing the corn-cakes from the blaze, he extinguished the flames at once, and urged Doña Julia to eat freely of a simple meal.
“Remember, señora,” pleaded de Sancerre, earnestly, seeing that the sudden taking-off of their aged comrade had robbed the sorrowing girl of all desire for food—“remember that the larder of our raft will be a crude affair. I know not when the luxury of corn-cakes will tempt our teeth again.”
Doña Julia smiled sadly and renewed her efforts to do justice to a repast for which she had no heart.
“Think not, señor,” she said, in Spanish, gazing at de Sancerre with eyes bright with pride and fortitude, “that I have learned no lessons from a year of peril and dismay. You knew me in the luxury of courts. Methinks you’ll find me changed in many ways. I mourn old Noco. She saved me from despair. She hated Spaniards, but she worshipped me. Ah, señor, she had a loyal heart. May the saints be kind to her!”
“Amen!” exclaimed de Sancerre, fervently. “And now, señora, we have no time to lose! Untie the meal-bags in the corner there and bring the cords to me. I’ll pull a hut to pieces and make a raft of logs upon the shore. For every mile the river puts between this spot and us, I’ll vow a candle to St. Maturin.”
Fastening a powder-horn and a bullet-pouch to his waist, to the deep resentment of his patrician rapier, de Sancerre, with gun in hand, hurried to the river-bank and chose a convenient spot from which to launch his treacherous craft upon a kindly current flowing toward the camp of friends. As the hours passed by and his raft grew in size and strength, the depression which the death of Noco had cast upon de Sancerre’s spirits stole away, and there were hope and cheer in the smiles with which he greeted Doña Julia when she came to him now and again from the hut with stout cords with which he spliced together the clumsy, stubborn logs of his rude boat. At short intervals he would abandon his task as a raft-builder to scan, with straining eyes, the broad expanse of river upon his left, or to listen breathlessly for sounds of menacing import in the forest at his back. But the sun had reached the zenith, his raft was nearly built, and de Sancerre could discover, neither upon flood nor land, aught to suggest that man-hunting man was stirring at high noon.
“Courage, mademoiselle,” he cried, gayly, in his native tongue, as Doña Julia, pale and silent, approached him from the hut. “Another hour will find us voyageurs at last. We’ll name our gallant little ship La Coyocop!”