THE SPY.
It was about eight in the morning when Valentine and Curumilla left Don Louis. The hunter had passed the whole night without closing an eye. He felt fatigued: his eyelids, weighed down with sleep, closed involuntarily. Still he prepared to make the researches his foster brother had intrusted to him, when Curumilla, noticing his condition, invited him to take a few hours' rest, remarking that he did not absolutely want him in following up the trail he had noticed in the morning, and that he would give him a good account of all he did.
Valentine placed the most entire confidence in Curumilla. Many times, during the course of their common existence, he had been in a position to appreciate the sagacity, cleverness, and experience of the chief; hence he needed but little pressing to consent to his proposition of going out alone, and after giving him the warmest recommendations, he wrapped himself up in his cloak, and fell off to sleep at once.
He had enjoyed for about two hours a peaceful and refreshing nap when he felt a hand gently laid on his shoulder. So light as the touch was, it was sufficient to arouse the hunter, who, like all men habituated to prairie life, maintained, if we may use the expression, a sense of external things even during sleep. He opened his eyes, and looked fixedly at the man who had come to disturb the rest he was enjoying, while mentally consigning him to the deuce.
"Well," he said, with the harsh accent of a man aroused at the pleasantest moment of a dream, "what do you want of me, Don Cornelio? Could you not select a more favourable moment to talk with me, for I suppose what you have to say to me is not extremely important?"
Don Cornelio (for it was really that gentleman who awoke Valentine) laid his finger on his mouth, while looking suspiciously around, as if to recommend caution to the hunter; then he leant over his ear.
"Pardon me, Don Valentine," he said; "but I believe that the communication I have to make to you is of the utmost importance."
Valentine sprang up as if moved by a spring, and looked the Spaniard in the face.
"What is the matter, then?" he asked in a low and concentrated voice, which, however, had something imperious about it.
"I will tell you in two words. Colonel Florés (whose face, by the way, does not at all please me) has been doing nothing but prowl round the mission since the morning, inquiring what has been done and left undone, gossiping with one or the other, and trying, above all, to discover the opinion of our men as regards the chief. There was not much harm in that, perhaps, but, so soon as he saw you were asleep, he learnt that the count, who was engaged with his correspondence, had given orders that he should not be disturbed for some hours. Upon this he pretended, to retire to a half-ruined cabin situated at the outskirts of the mission; but a few minutes after, when he supposed that no one was thinking about him, instead of taking a siesta as he had given out, he slipped away from the hut among the trees like a man afraid of being surprised, and disappeared in the forest."