THE CAMP IN THE MOUNTAINS.
On leaving the jacal, Red Cedar proceeded towards the mountains. The squatter was one of those old hands to whom all the tracks of the desert are known. From the few words uttered by Father Seraphin, and the haste he had shown in coming to warn him, Red Cedar understood that this time the final contest was about to begin, without truce or pity, in which his enemies would employ all their knowledge and skill to finish with him once for all.
He had been fortunate enough to reach the Sierra de los Comanches soon enough to be able, to efface his trail. During a month he and Valentine had carried on one of those incredible campaigns of skill and boldness in which each employed every scheme his fertile mind suggested to deceive his adversary.
As frequently happens under such circumstances, Red Cedar, who at the outset only accepted unwillingly the struggle into which he was forced, had gradually felt his old wood ranger instincts aroused. His pride had been excited, for he knew he had to deal with Valentine, that is to say, the cleverest hunter on the prairie, and he had consequently displayed a degree of skill that surprised himself, in order to prove to his terrible adversary that he was not unworthy of him.
For a whole month the two had been unsuccessfully manoeuvring within a circle of less than ten leagues, constantly turning round one another, and often only separated by a screen of foliage, or a ravine. But this contest must have an end sooner or later, Red Cedar felt, and being no longer sustained by the same passions which formerly served as the motive of all his actions, despondency was beginning to seize upon him, the more so, because physical pain had been recently joined to his moral sufferings, and threatened to deal him the final blow. Let us see in what condition Red Cedar was at the moment when the exigencies of our story compel us to return to him.
It was about eight o'clock in the evening; three men and a girl, assembled round a scanty fire of bois de vache, were warming themselves, and, at times, casting a dull glance at the gloomy gorges of the surrounding mountains. These four persons were Nathan, Sutter, Fray Ambrosio, and Ellen.
The spot where they found themselves was one of those narrow ravines, the bed of dried torrents, so many of which are met with in the Sierra de los Comanches. On the flanks of the ravine was a thick chaparral, the commencement of a gloomy virgin forest, from the mysterious depths of which could be heard at intervals the lengthened howling and roar of wild beasts.
The situation of the fugitives was most critical, and even desperate. Shut up for a month amid these arid mountains, tracked on all sides, they had hitherto only escaped their persecutors through the immense sacrifices and the prodigious craft displayed by Red Cedar. The pursuit had been so active, that, being constantly on the point of being surprised by their enemies, they did not dare kill the few head of game they came across. A shot, by revealing the direction in which they were, would have been sufficient to betray them.
In the meanwhile, the scanty stock of food they had brought with them from the jacal, in spite of their saving, had been consumed, and hunger, but before all, thirst, was beginning to be felt. Of all the scourges that afflict hapless travellers, thirst is indubitably the most terrible. Hunger may be endured during a certain length of time, without excessive suffering, especially at the end of a few days; but thirst occasions atrocious pain, which, after a while, produces a species of furious madness; the palate is parched, the throat is on fire, the eyes are suffused with blood, and the wretched man, a prey to a horrible delirium, which makes him see the desired water everywhere, at length dies in atrocious agony, which nothing can calm.
When their provisions were exhausted, they were compelled to procure others; but in the mountains that was almost impossible, as the fugitives were deprived of their freedom of action. For a few days they continued to support life on roots, and small birds caught in a snare; but unfortunately, the cold became daily sharper, and the birds withdrew to warmer regions; hence they were deprived of this resource.