As to the former, they had not neglected any precaution to escape observation. Concealed behind a thick curtain of shrubbery, they were ambuscaded like hunters on the watch.
The horses, saddled and ready to be mounted, had their nostrils covered with girdles, to prevent them from neighing. Near each horse a lance was struck in the ground, the point downwards.
This last troop evidently knew the precarious situation in which they were, and the disagreeable neighbours that chance or fatality had given them.
Meanwhile the Montoneros, far from showing the least inquietude or the slightest fear of the enemies camped so near them, appeared gay and very unconcerned.
But in all other respects the plain preserved its calmness; no suspicious undulation agitated the grass; the woods preserved their mysterious silence.
Hours passed; it was about two o'clock in the afternoon. A heavy heat oppressed the earth; a heated atmosphere which no breeze refreshed bent towards the ground the half-burnt grass. At this moment some thirty horsemen, amongst whom glittered the golden embroidery of the uniforms of several officers, left the camp of which we have previously spoken, and proceeding in a slanting direction, gained the river.
These horsemen wore the Brazilian uniform. Whether they were persuaded that the plain was really solitary, whether they reckoned on the proximity of their camp to be defended against any dangers which might threaten them, or whether there was any other motive, they marched with very little order, the officers, amongst whom was a general, keeping in advance, and the horsemen forming the escort going on haphazard.
Nearly at the same time, when these foragers or scouts left their camp to make, at so unusual an hour, a trip into the plain, at some distance before them, on the bank of the river, a troop of horsemen, equal in number—that is to say, composed of about thirty men, in the picturesque costume of the Buenos Aireans, appeared marching to meet them.
This second troop marched as rapidly as their horses, harassed by a long journey, could proceed.
The two troops soon found themselves in sight.