After a few more words of slight importance, Red Cedar left the clearing, swam his horse over the river, and on reaching firm ground, buried himself in the tall grass, where he soon disappeared.
It was about six in the evening, when the squatter left his comrades, to go in search of the men whom he hoped to make his allies. The gambusinos had paid but slight attention to the departure of their chief, the cause of which they were ignorant of, and which they supposed would not last long. The night had completely fallen. The gambusinos, wearied by a long journey, were sleeping, wrapped in their zarapés, round the fire, while two sentries alone watched over the common safety. They were Dick and Harry, the two Canadian hunters, whom chance had so untowardly brought among these bandits.
Three men leaning against the trunk of an enormous ungquito were conversing in a low voice. They were Andrés Garote, Fray Ambrosio, and Eagle-wing. A few paces from them was the leafy cabin, beneath whose precarious shelter reposed the squatter's wife, her daughter Ellen, and Doña Clara.
The three men, absorbed in the conversation, did not notice a white shadow emerge from the cabin, glide silently along, and lean against the very tree, at the foot of which they were.
Eagle-wing, with that penetration which distinguishes the Indians, had read the hatred which existed between Fray Ambrosio and Red Cedar; but the Coras had kept this discovery in his heart, intending to take advantage of it when the opportunity presented itself.
"Chief," the monk said, "do you suspect who the allies are Red Cedar has gone to seek?"
"No," the other replied, "how should I know?"
"Still it must interest you, for you are not so great a friend of the Gringo as you would like to appear."
"The Indians have a very dense mind; let my father explain himself so that I may understand him, and be able to answer him."
"Listen," the monk continued, in a dry voice and with a sharp accent, "I know who you are: your disguise, clever and exact though it be, was not sufficient to deceive me: at the first glance I recognised you. Do you believe that if I had said to Red Cedar, this man is a spy or a traitor; he has crept among us to make us tall into a trap prepared long beforehand: in a word, this man is no other than Moukapec, the principal Cacique of the Coras? Do you believe, I say, that Red Cedar would have hesitated to blow out your brains, eh, chief? Answer."