"I know it," said the warrior. "Farewell; I will return to the warriors of my tribe."
"Farewell," Valentine said.
And vigorously lashing his horse, the Apache Chief started at full speed, and soon disappeared in the darkness. Valentine listened for a moment to the echo of his horse's hoofs on the hardened ground, and then returned thoughtfully to the calli, in which Ellen was nursing White Gazelle.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
TWO WOMEN'S HEARTS.
Ellen felt moved with pity at the sight of this young and lovely woman, who lay on the floor of the hut, and whom life seemed to have quitted forever. She felt for her, although she never remembered to have seen her before, a sympathy for which she could not account, and which instinctively attracted her.
Who was this woman? How had she, still so young, become mixed up in these scenes of murder and associated with these savage prairie men, to whom every human being is an enemy, every valuable article a booty? Whence arose this strange ascendancy which she exerted over outlaws, whom she made cry like children?
All these thoughts crossed Ellen's mind, and heightened, were that possible, the interest she felt in the stranger. And yet, in her heart, a vague fear, an undefinable presentiment warned her to be on her guard, and that this woman, gifted with, a strange character and fatal beauty, was an enemy, who would destroy her happiness forever.
As Ellen was one of those rare women for whom evil sentiments did not exist, and who made it a principle to obey, under all circumstances, the impulse of her heart, without reflecting on the consequences that might result from it, she silenced the feeling of revolt within her, and bent over White Gazelle.