"Oh, Heaven!" the girl exclaimed, as she writhed her hands in despair, "Am I not sufficiently punished, Don, Pablo? Listen to me, for mercy's sake! In a few minutes it will be too late; I wish to save you, I say."
"You lie impudently," Valentine exclaimed, as he leaped from a thicket; "only a moment ago, at that very spot, you told Nathan, the worthy son of your accomplice, Red Cedar, of the arrival of an Apache war party; deny it, if you dare."
This revelation was a thunderbolt for the girl; she felt that it would be impossible for her to disabuse the man she loved, and convince him of her innocence, in the face of this apparently so evident proof of her treachery. She fell crushed at the young man's feet.
"Oh," he said with disgust, "this wretched woman is my evil genius."
He made a movement to retire.
"A moment," Valentine exclaimed, as he stopped him; "matters must not end thus: let us destroy this creature, ere she causes us to be massacred."
He coldly placed the muzzle of a pistol on the girl's temple, and she did not flinch to escape the fate that threatened her. But Don Pablo hastily seized his arm.
"Valentine," he said, "what are you about, my friend?"
"It is true," the hunter replied; "when so near death, I will not dishonour myself by killing this wretch."
"Well done, brother," Don Pablo said, as he gave a glance of scorn to the Gazelle, who implored him in vain; men like us do not assassinate women. "Let us leave her and sell our lives dearly."