The meal was what it should be among men who expect from one moment to another to see a terrible and inevitable danger fall upon them—that is to say, sorrowful and silent. Each ate in haste, without holding conversation with his neighbour; then, hunger satisfied and the cigarette lighted, the travellers, without even wishing good night to each other, enveloped themselves in their frazadas and their pellones, and tried to sleep with that placid resignation which forms the foundation of the character of the Creoles, and makes them accept without useless murmurs the frequently disastrous consequences of the nomadic life to which they are condemned.
Soon, with the exception of the three or four sentinels placed on the outskirts of the encampment, in order to guard against the approach of wild beasts, and the two chiefs of the caravan—that is to say, Don Santiago and Emile—all were plunged into deep sleep.
The Pincheyra appeared thoughtful; he smoked his cigarette, his back leaning on a trunk of a tree, and his eyes directed straight forward, without looking on any object. The Frenchman, on the contrary, more wakeful and more gay than ever, was humming a tune and amusing himself by digging with the point of a knife a hole in which he piled some dry wood, evidently intending to light a watch fire to warm his feet, when he felt inclined to go to sleep.
"Eh! Don Santiago," said he at last, addressing Pincheyra, and touching him lightly on the shoulder, "what are you thinking of now? Is it that you are not going to try and sleep for a couple of hours?"
The Chilian shook his head without answering.
"What does it matter?" pursued the young man persistently—"You, who a little while ago reproached me for my melancholy—you seem to have inherited it, upon my word. Is it the weight of the atmosphere that influences you?"
"Do you take me for a woman?" answered he at last, in a surly tone; "What matters to me the state of the sky? Am I not a child of the mountains, accustomed from my infancy to brave the most terrible storms?"
"But, then, what is it that distresses you?"
"What is it? Do you wish to know?"
"Pardieu! Since I ask it."