"Does my father doubt it?"
"No; Eglantine is a worthy daughter of the Comanches; she will come without a murmur. A Paleface, a friend of Mahchsi Karehde, is in danger at this moment."
"The Chief will save him?"
The Indian smiled. "Yes," he said; "or, if I arrive too late for that, I will at least avenge him, and his soul will quiver with joy in the blessed prairies, on learning from his people that his friend has not forgotten him."
"I am ready to follow the Chief."
"Let us go, then; it is time."
The Indian leaped into his saddle at a bound, and Eglantine prepared to follow on foot. Indian squaws never mount the warhorse of their husbands or brothers. Condemned, by the laws that govern their tribe, to remain constantly bowed beneath a yoke of iron, to be reduced to the most complete abjectness, and devote themselves to the harshest and most painful tasks, they endure everything without complaining, persuaded that it must be so, and that nothing can save them from the implacable tyranny that weighs on them from their birth to their death. In compelling his wife to follow him on foot, through a virgin forest, by impracticable roads, rendered more difficult through the darkness, Flying Eagle was convinced that he was only doing a very simple and natural thing. Eglantine, for her part, understood it so, for she did not make the slightest remark.
They set out, then, turning their back on the noise, and proceeding towards the clearing. For what object did the Chief retrace his steps, and return to the spot he had left an hour previously, in order to get rid of the Gambusinos? We shall probably soon learn.
When about a hundred yards from the clearing, they heard a shot. Flying Eagle stopped. "Wah!" he said, "what has happened? Can I be mistaken?"
Immediately dismounting, he gave his wife his horse to hold, bidding her follow him at a distance; and, gliding through the grass, he advanced hurriedly toward the clearing, feeling much alarmed by the shot, which he could not account for, as the idea did not for a moment occur to him that Don Estevan had fired it with the intention of killing himself. The Chief was convinced that a man of that stamp would never give the game up, however desperate it was. His appreciation was not entirely false.