After crossing the ford, Don Miguel urged his horse at full speed straight ahead. This furious race lasted nearly two hours, through thickets, which at every moment grew more closely together, and gradually were metamorphosed into a forest.
After crossing a deep gorge, whose perpendicular sides were covered with impenetrable thickets, the young man arrived at a species of narrow lane, into which the paths of wild beasts opened, and in the centre of which an Indian, dressed in his war costume, and smoking gravely, crouched over a fire of bois de vache; while his horse, hobbled a short distance off, was busily browsing on the young tree shoots. So soon as he saw the Indian, Don Miguel pushed on even at greater speed. "Good evening, Chief!" he said, as he leaped lightly to the ground, and amicably pressed the hand the warrior held out to him.
"Wah!" the Chief said to him, "I no longer expected my pale brother."
"Why so, as I had promised to come?"
"Perhaps it would have been better for the Paleface to remain in his camp. Addick is a warrior; he has discovered a trail."
"Good; but trails are not wanting on the prairie."
"Och! this is wide, and incautiously trodden; it is a Paleface trail."
"Bah! what do I care?" the young man remarked, carelessly. "Do you fancy my band the only one crossing the prairie at this moment?"
The Redskin shook his head. "An Indian warrior is not mistaken on the war trail. It is the trail of an enemy of my brother's."
"What makes you suppose that?"