[CHAPTER III.]
A NIGHT CONFERENCE.
Don Stefano Cohecho seemed to be thoroughly acquainted with the desert. So soon as he was on the prairie, and fancied himself safe from any curious eye, he raised his head haughtily, his step grew more confident, his eye sparkled with a gloomy fire, and he walked with long steps towards a clump of palm trees, whose small fans formed but a scanty protection by day against the burning sunbeams.
Still he neglected no precaution; at times he stopped hurriedly, to listen to the slightest suspicious sound, or interrogate with searching glance the gloomy depths of the forest. But after a few seconds, re-assured by the calm that prevailed around him, he jogged onwards with that deliberate step he had adopted on leaving the camp.
Domingo walked literally in his steps; spying and watching each of his movements with that sagacity peculiar to the half-breeds, while carefully keeping on his guard against any surprise on the part of the man he was following. Domingo was one of those men of whom only too many are met with on the frontiers. Gifted with great qualities and great vices, equally fit for good and evil, capable of accomplishing extraordinary things in either sense; but who, for the most part, are only guided by their evil instincts.
He was at this moment following the stranger, without exactly knowing the motive that made him do so; not, even having decided whether to be for or against him; awaiting, to make up his mind, a little better knowledge of the state of affairs, and the chance of weighing the advantage he should derive from treachery or the performance of his duty. Hence, he carefully avoided letting his presence be suspected, for he guessed that the mystery he wished to detect would, if he succeeded, offer him great advantages, especially if he knew how to work it.
The two men marched thus for nearly an hour, one behind the other, Don Stefano not suspecting for a moment that he was so cleverly watched, and that one of the most knowing scoundrels on the prairie was at his heels.
After numberless turnings in the tall grass, Don Stefano at length arrived at the bank of the Rio Colorado, which at this spot was as wide and placid as a lake, running over a bed of sand, bordered by thick clumps of cottonwood trees, and tall poplars, whose roots were bathed in the water. On reaching the river, the stranger stopped, listened for a moment, and, raising his fingers to his mouth, imitated the bark of a coyote. Almost immediately, the same signal rose in the midst of the mangrove trees, and a little birchbark canoe, pulled by two men, appeared on the bank.
"Eh!" Don Stefano said, in a suppressed voice, "I had given up all hopes of meeting you."
"Did you not hear our signal?" one of the men in the canoe answered.