About fifty yards from them, in a copse of brambles and shrubs, a young colt about two months old was fastened to the trunk of a gigantic catalpa. The poor animal, after making vain efforts to break the cord that held it, had at length recognised the inutility of its attempts, and had sorrowfully lain down on the ground.
The two men, whom we left young at the end of our prologue, had now reached the second half of life. Although age had got but a slight grasp on their iron bodies, a few grey hairs were beginning to silver the hunter's scalp, and wrinkles furrowed his face, which was bronzed by the changes of the seasons.
Still, with the exception of these slight marks, which serve as a seal to ripened age, nothing denoted any weakening in the Canadian; on the contrary, his eye was still bright, his body equally straight, and his limbs just as muscular.
As for the Negro, no apparent change had taken place in him, and he seemed as young as ever; he had merely grown lustier, but had lost none of his unparalleled activity.
The spot where the two wood rangers had camped was certainly one of the most picturesque on the prairie.
The midnight breeze had swept the sky, whose dark blue vault seemed studded with innumerable spangles of diamonds, in the midst of which the southern cross shone; the moon poured forth its white rays, which imparted to objects a fantastic appearance; the night had that velvety transparence peculiar to twilight; at each gust of wind the trees shook their damp heads, and rained a shower, which pattered on the shrubs.
The river flowed on calmly between its wooded banks, looking in the distance like a silver riband, and reflecting in its peaceful mirror the trembling rays of the moon, which had proceeded about two-thirds of its course.
So great was the silence of the desert, that the fall of a withered leaf, or the rustling of a branch agitated by the passage of a reptile, could be heard.
The two men were conversing in a low voice; but, singularly enough with men so habituated to desert life, their night encampment, instead of being, according to the invariable rules of the prairie, situated on the top of a hillock, was placed on the slope that descended gently to the river, and in the mud of which numerous footprints of more than a suspicious nature were encrusted, the majority belonging to the family of the great Carnivora.
In spite of the sharp cold of night, and the icy dew which made them tremble, the hunters had lit no fire; still they would assuredly have derived great comfort from warming their limbs over the genial flames; the Negro especially, who was lightly attired in drawers that left his legs uncovered, and a fragment of a zarapé, full of holes, was trembling all over.