"The accomplices of your abductor tried to kill him to prevent Captain Kidd being followed. His wound, however, was serious without being mortal. I will warrant that, as soon as he could fork a steed, he set out on the pursuit of you."
"Oh, then you hope he will overtake us?"
"He or another will be at our side soon," answered the false lieutenant, ambiguously.
"You are not trifling with me?"
"I am not that kind of Wolverine," answered Master Corkey Joe with a forced laugh. "I say Don Gregorio, spite of his age, is on our track, because he loved your father. Your father is also afoot, and, at last accounts, hoped to enlist in his aid some mountain trappers. They are not sordid men—often have they been known to lay aside a whole season's harvest of incredible toil to rescue a man or woman of their colour from the red men, or to flock to the border when the cry of an Indian outbreak commanded all gun bearers to fill a loophole in the forts. But this troop which surrounds us is bent on a mission hostile to the first explorers of this region, and its stores of fiery spirit and ammunition are intended to be sold to the Indians, clean counter to the laws of the United States and British Dominion, and to the regulations of the fur trade companies. So Captain Kidd's organisation is doomed! And you must be saved when it is crushed."
"Have I, indeed, friends in this vast loneliness?"
"In the midst of those mountains draped in untrodden snows, in those unfathomable canyons, upon the plain and within the caverns that profoundly tunnel the glaciers, upwards of fifty brave, strong, and honest men, are invisibly repeating my call to them."
"Your calls?"
"I have been talking to them whilst we were conversing here."
"I do not understand, señor."