CHAPTER IX.
HOSPITALITY.
We have said that night had fallen for some time past, and it was quite dark under covert. In the black sky a chaos of clouds, laden with the electric fluid, rolled heavily along. Not a star glistened in the vault of heaven; an autumnal breeze whistled gustily through the trees, and at each blast covered the ground with a shower of dead leaves.
In the distance could be heard the dull and mournful appeals of the wild beasts proceeding to the drinking place, and the snapping bark of the coyotes, whose ardent eyes at intervals gleamed like incandescent coals amid the shrubs. At times lights flashed in the forest and ran along the fine marsh grass like will-o'-the-wisps. Large dried up sumach trees stood at the corners of the clearing, in which the bivouac was established, and in the fantastic gleams of the fire waved like phantoms their winding sheets of moss and lianas. A thousand sounds passed through the air; nameless cries escaped from invisible lairs, hollowed beneath the roots of the aged trees; stifled cries descended from the crests of the quebradas, and our adventurers felt an unknown world living around them, whose proximity froze the soul with a secret terror.
Nature was sad and melancholy, as when she is in travail with one of those terrible overthrows so frequent in these regions. In spite of themselves, the hunters underwent the influence of this discomfort of the desert. There are black hours in life, in which, either through the action of external objects, or the common and mysterious disposition of the inner being, that me which cannot be defined, the strongest men feel unconsciously mastered by a strange contagion of sadness which they seem to breathe in the air, and which overpowers them without power of defence. The news brought by Quoniam had further augmented this tendency of the hunters to melancholy; hence the conversation round the fire, ordinarily gay and careless, was sad and short. Everyone yielded to the flood of gloomy thoughts that contracted his heart, and the few words exchanged at lengthened intervals between the hunters generally remained unanswered.
Carmela alone, lively as a nightingale, continued in a low voice her conversation with Singing-bird, while warming herself, for the night was cold, and not noticing the anxious sideglances which the Canadian at times gave her. At the moment when Lanzi and Quoniam were preparing to go to sleep, a slight crackling was heard in the shrubs. The hunters, suddenly torn from their secret thoughts, raised their heads quickly. The horses had stopped eating, and with their heads turned to the thicket, and ears laid back, appeared to be listening.
In the desert, everything has a reason; the wood rangers, accustomed to analyse all the rumours of the prairie, know and explain them without ever making a mistake; the rustling of the branch on which the hand rests, the noise of the leaf falling on the ground, the murmur of the water over the pebbles—nothing escapes the marvellous sagacity of these men, whose senses have acquired an extraordinary delicacy.
"Someone is prowling round us," Loyal Heart muttered in a voice not above a breath.
"A spy, of course," said Lanzi.
"Spy or no, the man who is approaching is certainly a white," said Tranquil, as he stretched out his arm to clutch the rifle lying by his side.