"The devil!" Nathan sharply objected, "Are you mad, or did you pretend to save my life, merely to deliver me to our enemies with your own hands?"
"What do you mean?"
"Something you would see as well as I, if it were day; the forest suddenly terminates a few yards from here on the edge of an immense quebrada."
"Oh, oh," Red Cedar said, with a frown; "what is to be done in that case?"
"Return by the road you came for about half a league, and then go to the left. I have seen enough of the country since I left you to have a confused resemblance of the shape of the mountain, but, as you say, the main point at this moment is to be off from here?"
"The more so, as the moon will soon rise," Sutter observed, "and if the redskins perceived Nathan's escape, they would soon find our trail."
"Well said," Nathan replied, "let us be off."
Red Cedar placed himself once more at the head of the small party, and they turned back. Progress was extremely difficult in this black night; they were obliged to grope, and not put down their foot till they were certain the support was solid. If they did not, they ran a risk of falling and being dashed on the ground, at a depth of seventy or eighty feet.
They had scarcely gone three hundred yards in this way, when a frightful clamour was heard behind them: a great light illumined the forest, and between the leaves the fugitives perceived the black outlines of the Indians running in every direction, gesticulating and yelling ferociously.
"Hilloh," Red Cedar said, "I fancy the Comanches have found out your desertion."