"I believe that the expedition whose passage I discovered is directed against the great cabin of the palefaces at Guetzalli."
"What makes you suppose so?" Louis asked.
"This. At the hour the alligator leaves the mud of the bank to plunge again into the Gila, the sound of horses a short distance off compelled me, lest I should be discovered, to bury myself in a thicket of mangroves and floripondios. When sheltered from a surprise I looked out. A band of palefaces passed within bow-shot of me, in the direction of Guetzalli."
"I know who they were," Belhumeur remarked. "What next?"
"I recognised, in spite of the care he had taken to render himself unrecognisable, the man who served as guide to the party; then I guessed the infernal scheme formed by the Apache dogs."
"Who was it?"
"A man my brother knows. It is Wah-sho-che-gorah, the Black Bear, the principal chief of the White Crow tribe."
"If you are not mistaken, chief, horrible things will be done ere long. The Black Bear is the implacable enemy of the whites."
"That was the reason I spoke to my brother. But, after all what does it concern us? In the desert each man has enough to do in taking care of himself, without troubling about others."
The Canadian shook his head.