The Tigrero shook his head.
"No," he said, "you are mistaken. Your eyes are not so accustomed as mine to consult the sky. That is not a cloud."
"What is it, then?"
"The smoke of a bois de vâche fire kindled by travellers. We have neighbours."
"Oh!" the hacendero said. "Can we be on the trail of those friends we have lost so long?"
Don Martial remained silent. He minutely examined the smoke, which was soon mingled with the atmosphere. At length he said:—
"That smoke bodes us no good. Our friends, as you call them, are Frenchmen; that is to say, profoundly ignorant of desert life. Were they near us, it would be as easy to see them as that rock down there. They would have lighted not one fire, but twenty braseros, whose flames, and, above all, dense smoke, would have immediately revealed their presence to us. They do not select their wood: whether it be dry or damp they care little. They are unaware of the importance in the desert of discovering one's enemy, while not allowing one's presence to be suspected."
"You conclude from this?"
"That the fire you discovered has been lit by savages, or at least by wood rangers accustomed to the habits of Indian life. All leads to this supposition. Judge for yourself—you who, without any great experience, though having a slight acquaintance with the desert, took it for a cloud. Any superficial observer would have committed the same mistake as yourself, so fine and undulating as it is, and its colour harmonises so well with all those vapours the sun incessantly draws out of the earth. The men, whoever they may be, who lit that fire, have left nothing to chance; they have calculated and foreseen everything, and I am greatly mistaken if they are not enemies."
"At what distance do you suppose them from us?"