"Why so?"
"For this reason: we are here two paces from the Apaches, and one of them may awake at any moment. Just now we escaped only by a miracle; who knows how our enterprise will turn? If we separate, perhaps we may never come together again. My opinion is, that we should all go together to look for the horses; we should then save time in useless coming and going, and this will give us a considerable advantage."
"That is true," Valentine answered; "let us go together, and in that way we shall have finished sooner."
Sunbeam then began guiding the little party, but instead of re-entering the camp, as the hunters feared, she skirted it for some distance; then, making a sign to her companions to stop and wait, she advanced alone. Within five minutes she returned.
"The horses are there," she said, pointing to a spot in the fog; "they are hobbled, and guarded by a man walking up and down near them. What will my pale brothers do?"
"Kill the man, and seize the horses we want," Don Pablo said; "we are not in such a situation that we can be fastidious."
"Why kill the poor man, if he can be got rid of otherwise?" Doña Clara said, softly.
"That is true," Valentine supported her, "we are not wild beasts, hang it all!"
"The warrior shall not be killed," Curumilla said, in his grave voice; "my pale brothers must wait."
And seizing the lasso he always carried about him, the Aucas lay down on the ground, and began crawling through the tall grass. He soon disappeared in the fog.