"Don Rafaël," he said, "have courage!—be a man!"
"My God! my God! what fearful news are you going to communicate to me, my friend?"
"Your mother is a prisoner to Eagle Head."
"I know she is."
"If this very day, this morning even, you do not deliver yourself up to the chief of the Comanches—"
"Well, well!"
"She will be burnt alive."
"Ah!" the young man exclaimed, with a cry amounting to a shriek.
His friend supported him, otherwise he would have fallen from his saddle.
"But," Belhumeur asked, "is it today—do you say, old man, that she is to be burnt?"