"What, more last words?" the hunter answered.
"Only a word; but one which, I fancy, possesses some value in the present state of affairs."
"Make haste, then!"
"You wish to discover who this Don Stefano is, as he thinks proper to call himself, and I approve it; but there is another matter, I fancy, quite as serious, which we ought to try and make out first."
"What is it?"
Brighteye turned his head to the right, and then to the left, bent his body slightly forward, and lowering his voice so that the persons he addressed could hardly hear him, he continued in a severe tone,—"Desert life in no way resembles that in the towns. Down there people know each other slightly or intimately, either by name or through personal relations; they are frequently connected by interests more or less direct; in a word, socialities exist between all the inhabitants of towns, attaching them one to the other, and forming them, as it were, into one family. In the desert this is no longer the case; egotism and personality are the masters; the 'I' is the supreme law; each man only thinks of himself, only acts for himself, and I will say, further, only loves himself."
"Cut it short, for goodness sake, Brighteye; cut it short!" Marksman said impatiently. "What the deuce are you driving at?"
"Patience!" the imperturbable Canadian said; "patience! and you shall know. In short, then, in the desert, unless a man has lived for years side by side with another—sharing pain and pleasure, good fortune and ill, with him—he lives alone, without friends, only counting indifferent persons as enemies. In the trap to which Don Miguel almost fell a victim last night, two sorts of people revealed themselves spontaneously to him. These were, first, inveterate enemies, and then equally staunch friends. Do not fancy," the hunter continued, growing warm, "that I have not calculated the range of the words I have just made use of; you would be greatly mistaken. Does it not seem strange to you, as it does to me, now that you are cool, and reason in all the plenitude of your faculties,—does it not seem strange to you, I repeat, that, at a given moment, without it being possible to know how or why—these men suddenly emerged, as it were, from the ground, to lend you a hand; then, when the danger was past, or nearly so, they disappeared as suddenly as they came, leaving no trace of their passage, and not breaking the incognito which covered them,—is not this strange?—answer!"
"In truth," Marksman muttered, "I did not think of that till now; the conduct of those men is inexplicable."
"That is exactly what must be explained!" Brighteye exclaimed violently. "The prairie is not so densely populated that, at a given moment, and amid a frightful hurricane, there should be men ready to defend you for the mere satisfaction of doing so; those people must have had secret motives for doing so, and that object it is urgent for us to discover. Who tells us that they did not form part of the band which attacked you? that it was not a trick to seize you more easily—a part of the game, the execution of which our unforeseen presence destroyed? I repeat to you, we must, before all, find these men, know who they are, and what they want; in a word, whether they are friends or enemies."