The two other persons lived on a perfectly good understanding—Don Cornelio through carelessness, perhaps, Curumilla through pride.
The Spaniard—a dear lover of liberty, happy at living in the open air without troubles or annoyances of any description—goaded his novillos, strummed his jarana, and sang the interminable Romancero del Rey Rodrigo, which he began again imperturbably so soon as he had finished, in spite of Valentine's repeated remarks about the silence that must be maintained in the desert, in order to avoid the ambuscades which the Indians constantly place like so many spiders' webs in the path of incautious travellers. The Spaniard listened docilely, and with a contrite air, to the hunter's remonstrances; but, so soon as they were ended, he twanged a tune, and recommenced his romancero—a philosophy which the trail-seeker, while blaming, could not refrain from admiring.
Curumilla was always the man we have seen him—prudent, foresighted, and silent—but with a double dose of each quality. With eyes ever opened and ears alert, the Araucanian chief rode from one end of the file to the other, watching so carefully over its safety that no accident occurred up to the day when we resume our narrative.
They thus descended the woody slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and entered the naked and sandy plains that stretch down to the sea, and on which, with the exception of San José and Monterey (two towns in the last throes of existence), the traveller only sees stunted trees and thorny shrubs scattered at a great distance apart.
Three days before reaching San José—a miserable pueblo, which serves as a gathering place for hunters and arrieros who frequent these parts; but where the population, decimated by fevers and misery, can do but little for the forasteros (strangers)—the caravan encamped on the banks of a stream, beneath the shelter of a few trees that had grown there by accident, and which the sea breeze shook incessantly, and covered with that fine sand which enters the eyes, nose, ears, and nothing can keep out.
The sun was plunging into the sea under the form of a huge fire-ball; there was a fresh breeze; in the distance appeared a few white sails, which, like light kingfishers fearing a tempest, were hastening to reach San Francisco; the coyotes were beginning to bark furiously on the plain; and the few birds nestled on the branches tucked their heads under their wings, and prepared to go to sleep.
The fires were lighted, the animals penned, and after supper each hastened to repair, by a few hours' sleep, the fatigue of a long day's journey beneath a burning sky.
"Sleep!" Louis said. "I will keep the first watch—the idler's watch," he added with a smile.
"I will take the second, then," Valentine said.
"No, I will take that," Curumilla objected. "An Indian's eyes see clearly in the night."