The newcomers were Belhumeur, Louis and their friends the Comanches. In a few words they were apprised of all that had happened, and the tortures the French had endured.
"Good heavens!" Belhumeur shouted, "if provisions failed, you had water in abundance; then why do you complain of thirst?"
Without saying a word, Eagle-head and the Jester dug up the ground with their knives at the foot of an ahuehuelt. Within ten minutes an abundant stream of limpid water poured along the sand. The Frenchmen rushed in disorder toward it.
"Poor fellows!" Don Louis murmured, "Shall we not take them from this spot?"
"Do you think I would let them perish, now I have restored them to hope? Poor girl!" casting a melancholy glance at Doña Anita, who was laughing and cracking her fingers like castanets, "why is it not equally easy to restore her to reason?"
Don Louis sighed, but made no reply.
The French then learned a thing, which would have saved them all probably, had they known it sooner—that the ahuehuelt, which, in the Comanche Indian dialect, signifies the Lord of the Waters, is a tree which grows in arid spots, and its presence ever indicates either a spring flush with the soil or a hidden source; that for this reason the redskins hold it in veneration; and, as it is principally found in the deserts, they designate it also by the name of the Great Medicine of Travellers.
Two days later the adventurers, guided by the hunters and Comanches, quitted the desert. They speedily reached the Casa Grande of Moctecuhzoma, where their saviours, after giving them the provisions they stood in such pressing need of, finally left them, hardly knowing how to escape from their hearty thanks and blessings.
(Those of our readers who have felt an interest in Don Louis will find his history continued in another volume, called "THE GOLD-SEEKERS.")