Doña Hermosa was very glad of the change. Still suffering from her wound, she began to feel much difficulty in keeping her seat on her horse, although she exerted herself to the utmost to conceal her fatigue. But the quick eye of the hunter had noticed her lassitude, and he had brought the canoe for her relief.
They still continued to advance in this manner for nearly an hour, without any occurrence to disturb their tranquillity or make them suspect the vicinity of an enemy. At last they reached a turn of the river where the banks rose, for a considerable space, to a prodigious height, and hemmed in the stream between two walls of rock terminating in peaks. In the centre of the river arose a block of grayish granite, about sixty yards in circumference, and towards it the hunter guided the canoe. The Mexicans, at first astonished at this manoeuvre, were not long before they comprehended it; for, when close in upon the rock, they discovered that one of its faces sloped down in a gentle incline, and in this face there yawned the mouth of a cavern.
The canoe touched the ground; the travellers disembarked, and hastened to bring the horses to land: the poor animals were spent with fatigue.
"Come," said the hunter, shouldering the canoe; and the Mexicans followed him.
The cavern was spacious, and seemed to extend under water to a great distance. The horses were stabled in a corner, and supplied with provender.
"Here," said the hunter, "we are as much in safety as it is possible to be in the desert. If nothing comes to trouble us, we will pass the night here, in order to give our horses the rest of which they stand so much in need. You can light a fire without hesitation; the fissures in the rock, which afford you light, will divide the smoke, and render it invisible. Although I believe I have hidden our trail from those in pursuit of us, it is still incumbent on me to make a reconnaissance outside. Be not uneasy; present or absent, I watch over you. I will return in an hour. But take heed not to show yourselves; in the virgin forest, who can tell what eyes may be upon him? Adieu for a time."
He went out, leaving his companions a prey to anxiety, which was the more lively because, although well aware that some great danger threatened, they could not foresee either whence or in what manner it would fall on them, and because they were completely at the mercy of a man whose character and ultimate intentions it was impossible to divine.