The chief stamped his foot passionately; he gave the two ladies a glance of implacable hatred and went away, after saying one word of frightful meaning, "Tomorrow." So soon as the ladies were alone, they joined hands, knelt and prayed fervently to Him who alone had the power to save them.
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
IN THE FIELD.
The duty confided to Moonshine by General Cárdenas was not difficult to carry out. The track of the Mexicans was clearly marked on the ground, and the hunter suspected that the bargain the general had proposed to him was merely a pretext, and that in reality he wished to keep him by his side, in order to punish him if he had laid a trap for the Spaniards. Still the couple continued to gallop side by side, talking pleasantly and apparently well satisfied with each other. The day was splendid, the sky blue, and the sun dazzling; the leaves, washed by the rain, were greener and dew laden; the night storm had refreshed the atmosphere, and the hot sunbeams incessantly drawing out the moisture, made the earth smoke like the mouth of a crater; the birds twittered beneath the foliage, the squirrels leapt from branch to branch, and at times elks and antelopes, awakened by the sound of the horses, rose amid the lofty grass, looked around them timidly, and then bounded off in all directions. Men and horses unconsciously underwent the influence of the scene; they eagerly inhaled the air impregnated with the sharp scent of flowers and plants, and felt happy at living.
"On my honour," said the general, "give me the country. It is pleasant to breathe the fresh air, when you have been confined within stone walls for several days."
"Yes, you are right, General," the Canadian answered, joyously; "life is splendid in the desert; existence in town is ridiculous. Men were great asses for inventing them, and restricting their horizon, when they had space and liberty before them. Deuce take towns. The handsomest house is not worth the blade of grass that shelters the grasshopper we can hear singing so merrily."
"You seem to love the desert, Señor Moonshine?"
"I, General? Why I was born in it. My father was in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company as trapper. My mother brought me into the world on the shore of one of our magnificent Canadian lakes. My eyes first opened beneath the majestic verdant arcades of a virgin forest. The first horizon I gazed at was surrounded by chains of mountains whose haughty crest no human foot has yet trodden. Oh! General, how glorious it is to live in the desert without ties of any sort, to feel your heart beat freely in your bosom, to aspire through every pore the fragrant exhalations of the savannah. Alone with your horse, with no regrets for the past or care for the future, you feel that you live, and you unconsciously become a better man, because you are nearer to GOD whose sublime book ever lies open before you. Such an existence is the only true one, the only possible for a stout-hearted man; the other is only a continual slavery, an incessant restraint which withers ideas, dulls the intellect, and converts man such as GOD created him into a badly organized machine, a quarrelsome and wicked creature, who goes to his grave pale, sickly, and discontented."