The girls did not allow this to be repeated; they disappeared in an adjoining compartment, and returned a few minutes later, entirely disguised.
"Good," the Canadian said, after examining them for a moment; "we are going to try and enter the Larch-tree hacienda. Now follow me, and be prudent."
The eight persons left the grotto, gliding along in the darkness like phantoms.
No one, unless he has tried the experiment, can imagine what a night march on the desert is, when you are afraid each moment of falling into the hands of invisible enemies, who watch you behind every bush. Tranquil had placed himself at the head of the little party, who marched in Indian file, at times stooping to the ground, going on his hands and knees, or crawling on his stomach so as to avoid notice.
Doña Carmela, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties she had to surmount, advanced with admirable courage, never complaining, and enduring, without seeming to notice them, the scratches of the roots and brambles, which lacerated her hands, and caused her atrocious suffering. After three hours of gigantic effort in following Tranquil's trail, the latter stopped, and had them look around them. They raised their heads, and found themselves in the camp of the Texan insurgents. All around them, in the moonbeams, they could see the elongated shadows of Indian sentries, leaning on their long lances, motionless as equestrian statues, who were watching over the safety of their Paleface brothers. The young women felt a thrill of terror run over their persons at this sight, which was not of a nature to reassure them.
Fortunately for them, the Indians keep very bad guard, and most generally only place sentries to frighten the enemy. On this occasion, as they knew very well, they had no sortie to apprehend on the part of the Larch-tree garrison, the sentinels were nearly all asleep; but the slightest badly-calculated move, the merest false step, might arouse them, for these men, who are habituated in keeping their senses alive, can hardly ever be taken unawares.
At about two hundred yards at the most from the adventurers were the advanced works of the Larch-tree, gloomy, silent, and apparently, at least, abandoned or plunged in sleep. Tranquil had only stopped to let his comrades fully understand the imminent danger to which they were exposed, and urge them to redouble their caution, for, at the slightest weakness, they would be lost. After this they started again. They advanced thus for one hundred yards, or about half the distance separating them from the Larch-tree, when suddenly, at the moment when Tranquil stretched out his arms to shelter himself behind a sandhill, several men, crawling in the opposite direction found themselves face to face with him. There was a second of terrible anxiety.
"Who goes there?" a low and menacing voice asked.
"Oh!" he said; "We are saved! It is I—Tranquil the Tigrero."
"Who are the persons with you?"