The capataz handed it to him. Don Martial tore it from his hands, broke the seal with trembling fingers, and devoured it with his eyes. When he had finished reading it he concealed it in his bosom.
"Well," the capataz asked him, "what does my mistress say?"
"Only what you told me yourself," the Tigrero replied, in anything but a firm voice.
Blas Vasquez shook his head.
"Hem! That man is certainly hiding something from me," he muttered. "Can Doña Anita have deceived me?"
In the meanwhile the Tigrero walked about in agitation, apparently revolving some important project. At length he approached Belhumeur, who was smoking silently, and, leaning over his ear, uttered a few words in a low voice, to which the Canadian answered with a nod of assent. A flash of joy illumined the Tigrero's gloomy face as he made a sign to Cucharés to follow him, and quitted the bivouac a few minutes later. Don Martial and the lepero, both mounted, swam across the space separating them from the main land. The capataz perceived them at the moment they landed, and uttered a cry of astonishment.
"Why," he exclaimed, "the Tigrero is leaving us. Where can he be going?"
Belhumeur regarded the Mexican with his bittersweet look, and replied, with a jesting accent,—
"Who knows? Perhaps he is going to carry the answer to the letter you gave him."
"That is not impossible," the capataz remarked thoughtfully, little suspecting that he spoke the exact truth.