"During that expedition, full of strange and terrible incidents, two men accompanied you?"[1]
"Yes; a Canadian hunter and a Comanche chief."
"Very good. The hunter's name was Belhumeur, the chief's Eagle-head, I think?"
"They were."
"Do you not remember revealing to Belhumeur (a worthy and honourable hunter, by the way) the reason of the gloomy sorrow that devours you, and for what motives, mere vague suspicions though they were, you had come to Mexico in order to look for your dearest friend, from whom you had been separated so many years?"
"Yes, I remember telling him all that."
"The rest is not difficult to comprehend. I have known Belhumeur many years, and Heaven brought us together during a hunt on the Rio Colorado. One night, while seated at the fire, where our supper was roasting, after talking about a thousand indifferent things, Belhumeur, whom you had left only a few days previously, began by degrees to talk about you. At first, absorbed in my own thoughts, I paid but slight attention to his recital; but when he described to me your meeting with Count de Lhorailles in the desert, your name, uttered by Belhumeur unintentionally, made me tremble. It was then my turn to cross-question him. When I had learned everything, by making him tell the story twenty times over, my resolution was immediately formed, and two days later I set out on your track. For three months I have been following you, and have at last come up with you—this time, I hope, never to part again," he added with a stifled sigh. "Still I do not know what has occurred to you during the last three months. Tell me what you have been about. I am listening."
"Yes, I will tell you all. My object, indeed, in seeking you was to demand the fulfilment of a solemn promise."
The hunter's brow grew dark, and he frowned.
"Speak," he said; "I am listening. As for the promise to which you allude, when the moment has arrived I shall know how to fulfil it."