"Good gracious!" Valentine went on, "You can understand that on so dark a night as this it was easy for the chief, in spite of all his experience, to be deceived—especially at such a distance as we were from the animal, which we only glimpsed; still, we committed a grave fault, and I first of all, in not trying to acquire a certainty."
"Ah!" the Indian said, "my brother is right; wisdom resides in him."
"Now it is too late to go back—the fellow will have decamped," Valentine remarked, thoughtfully; "but," he added a moment after, as he looked round, "where on earth is Curumilla?"
At the same instant a loud noise of breaking branches, followed by a suppressed cry, was heard a little distance off.
"Oh, oh!" Valentine said, "Can the bear be at any tricks?"
The cry of the jay was heard.
"That is Curumilla's signal," said Valentine; "what the deuce can he be up to?"
"Let us go back and see," Don Miguel remarked.
"By Jove! Do you fancy I should desert my old companion so?" Valentine exclaimed, as he replied to his friend by a similar cry to the one he had given.
The hunters hurried back as quickly as the narrow and dangerous path they were following allowed. Curumilla, comfortably seated on a branch whose foliage completely hid him from anyone who might be spying overhead, was laughing to himself. It was so extraordinary to see the Ulmen laugh, and the hour seemed so unsuited for it, that Valentine was alarmed, and at the first moment was not far from believing that his worthy friend had suddenly gone mad.