"Now, caballeros, give me each your name, that I may find you when I need you."
He sat down and began enrolling the adventurers, who, with the men Red Cedar supplied, would form the band with which he hoped to reach the placer. We will leave the worthy monk for a few moments, and follow the two Canadian hunters.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
THE TWO HUNTERS.
Harry and Dick, whom we saw seated at a table in the mesón with Red Cedar and Fray Ambrosio, were however, very far from resembling those two men morally. They were free and bold hunters, who had spent the greater part of their life in the desert, and who, in the vast solitude of the prairie, had accustomed themselves to a life free and exempt from those vices which accompany a town residence.
For them gold was only the means to procure the necessary objects for their trade as hunters and trappers; and they never imagined that the possession of a large quantity of that yellow metal they despised would place them in a position to enjoy other pleasures than those they found in their long hunts of wild beasts—hunts so full of strange incidents and striking joys.
Thus Dick had been to the highest degree surprised when he saw his friend eagerly accept the monk's offer, and agree to go in search of the placer; but what even more surprised him was Harry's insisting that Red Cedar must take the lead of the expedition. Though no one could positively accuse the squatter, owing to the precautions he took, of leading a life of rapine and murder, still the mysterious conduct he affected, and the solitude in which he lived with his family, had cast on him a shadow of reprobation.
Every one regarded him as a scalp hunter, and yet no one would have ventured to affirm the odious deeds of which he was accused. The result of the general reprobation that fell on the squatter, and which we know to be fully merited, was that he and his family were placed under a ban by the frontier hunters and trappers, and every one fled not only their society, but any contact with them. Dick was thoroughly acquainted with his friend's upright character and nobility of heart. Hence his conduct under the present circumstances seemed to him perfectly incomprehensible, and he resolved to have an explanation with him.
They had scarce quitted the mesón ere Dick bent down to his companion, and said, while looking at him curiously,—