No one appeared: the glacis and entrenchments seemed abandoned. The Jester uttered his war cry, rose suddenly, and bounding forward like a jaguar, crossed the entrenchment, followed by his warriors. But, at the moment when the Comanches prepared to leap into the interior, a fearful discharge at point blank range levelled more than one half of the Indian detachment, while the survivors took to flight.
The Comanches had one great disadvantage—they possessed no firearms. The musketry decimated them, and they could only reply by firing their arrows, or by hurling their javelins. Noticing, therefore, though too late for himself, that the French were on their guard, the Jester, desperate at the check he had experienced, and his serious losses, was unwilling to further weaken the confidence of his warriors by useless tentatives. He concealed his detachment under the cover of the virgin forest, and resolved to wait for the Black Bear's signal ere he made a move.
Don Louis had followed Eagle-head. The Indian, after several turnings, led him almost opposite the isthmus battery to the entrance of a dense thicket of cactus, aloes, and floripondios.
"My brother can dismount," he said to the Frenchman; "we have arrived."
"Arrived where?" Louis asked, looking around him in vain.
Without replying the chief took the horse, and led it away. Louis, during the interval looked all around him: but his researches had no result.
"Well," Eagle-head asked on his return, "has my brother found it?"
"On my faith, no, chief. I give it up."
The Indian smiled.
"The palefaces have the eyes of moles," he said.