Two masked men took their seats on the granite blocks, and the Indians who carried the general laid him on the ground in front of this species of tribunal. The person who seemed to be the president of this sinister assembly gave a sign, the prisoner's bonds at once fell off, and he found himself once more able to move his limbs.
The general drew himself up, crossed his hands on his chest, threw his body back haughtily, raised his head and looked at the men who had apparently constituted themselves his judges with a glance of withering contempt.
"What do you want with me, bandits?" he said; "enough of this; these insolent manoeuvres will not alarm me."
"Silence!" the president said coldly, "it is not your place to speak thus."
Then he remarked to the Jester, who was standing a few paces from him—
"Bring up the other prisoners, old and new; everybody must hear what is going to be said to this man."
The Jester gave a signal to the warriors; some of them dismounted, approached the prisoners, and, after loosening the cord that bound the capataz, they led him, as well as the peons and the prisoners of the second caravan, in front of the tribunal, where they ranged themselves in line. Then, at a signal from the Jester, the horsemen closed up round the white men, who were thus hemmed in by Comanche warriors.
The spectacle offered by this assemblage of men, with their marked features and quaint garb, grouped without any apparent regularity on this voladero, which was suspended as if artificially over a terrible gulf, and leant against lofty mountains, with their abrupt flanks and snowy crest, was not without a certain grandeur.
A deadly silence brooded at this moment over the esplanade; all chests were heaving, every heart was oppressed. Redskins, hunters, and Mexicans all understood instinctively that a grand drama was about to be performed; invisible streams could be heard hoarsely murmuring in the cavern, and at times a gust of wind whistled over the heads of the horsemen.
The prisoners, affected by a vague and undefined terror, waited with secret anxiety, not knowing what fate these ferocious victors reserved for them, but certain that, whatever the decision formed about them might be, prayers would be impotent to move them, and that they would have to endure the atrocious torture to which they would doubtless be condemned.