"Canarios! Gossip," he said to him, with a species of respect, "you are a great man. Forgive my suspicions."
"You accept, then?"
"Caspita! You need not ask that. Eagerly, and I swear it, that never squirrel leaped as I will do."
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
NATHAN PAINTS HIMSELF.
So soon as he had got out of sight of his comrades, Nathan halted. He was neither so careless nor confident as he wished to appear. When he was alone and away from those who might ridicule, he gave way to his ill temper, and cursed the chance that placed him in such a precarious and dangerous position.
Nathan, we think we have already said, was a species of Hercules, gifted with uncommon energy and ferocity. Accustomed from his childhood to a desert life and its sanguinary tragedies, he was not the man to despond and despair easily. Pitiless to himself as to others, he perfectly accepted the consequences of the situation in which he found himself at times placed, and, in case of necessity, was resolved to fight to the death in defence of his scalp.
At this moment, however, it was not his position in itself that rendered him anxious. He had been a hundred times beset by equal danger in crossing the prairie; but hitherto, when he had perilled his life, he had done it with an object he knew perfectly well, with the prospect, near or remote, of some profit; but this time he regarded himself as obeying a will he was ignorant of, for a purpose he did not understand, and for interests that were not his own. Hence, he cursed his father, Fray Ambrosio, and himself for having thus got into a trap, whence he did not know how to escape.
Red Cedar's last recommendation was necessary. Nathan was not at all anxious to have his trail discovered. He employed all the means his intelligence suggested to him to hide it from the keenest glance, only taking a step after convincing himself that the trace of the previous one had disappeared. After ripe reflection, he had arrived at the following conclusion—