A few minutes later Don Louis was riding back to the prairie, while the Count de Lhorailles and the two Mexicans, made preparations for an active defence of the colony.
"It is strange," Don Louis muttered to himself as he galloped on, "that this man who is my countryman, and for whom I shall risk my life ere long, inspires me with no sympathy."
Suddenly his horse shied. Roughly startled from his reverie, the Frenchman looked up.
Eagle-head stood before him.
[CHAPTER XI.]
THE MEXICAN MOON.
After his visit to the hunters the Black Bear set out, at the head of his warriors, to proceed to a neighbouring island, known by the name of Choke-Heckel, which was one of the advanced Apache posts on the Mexican frontier. He reached the isle at daybreak. At this spot the Gila attains its greatest width: each of the arms formed by the island is nearly two miles wide. The island which rises in the middle of the water, like a basket of flowers, is about two miles long by half a mile wide, and is one immense bouquet, exhaling the sweetest perfumes, and the melodious songs of the birds which congregate in incalculable numbers on all the branches of the trees by which it is covered.
Illumined on this day by the splendid beams of a flashing sun, the place had a strange and unusual appearance which had a powerful effect on the imagination. As far as the eye could reach over the island and the two banks of the Gila could be seen tents of buffalo hide, or huts of branches leaned against each other, and whose strange colours wearied the sight. Numerous canoes made of horse-skins sewed together, and mostly round, or else hollowed out of trunks of trees, traversed the river in every direction. The warriors dismounted and set their horses free, which immediately proceeded to join a number of others.
The chief went towards the huts before which feather flags and the scalps of renowned warriors fluttered in the breeze, passing through the women who were preparing the morning meal. But the Black Bear had been recognised immediately on his arrival, and all got out of his way with respectful bows. A thing no European could credit is the respect all Indians, without exception, pay to their chiefs. Among those who have kept up the manners of their forefathers, and, disdaining European civilisation, have continued to wander about the prairies as free men, this respect is changed into fanaticism, almost into adoration.