Ten days had passed away since the events related in our last chapter.
We will conduct the reader, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, into the grotto discovered by Belhumeur, of which Loyal Heart had made his chosen habitation.
The interior of the cavern, lighted by numerous torches of that wood which the Indians call candlewood, which burned, fixed at distances on the projections of the rock, presented the aspect of a halt of gipsies, or of an encampment of bandits, whichever the stranger might fancy, who should chance to be admitted to visit it.
Forty trappers and Comanche warriors were dispersed about here and there; some were sleeping, others smoking, other cleaning their arms or repairing their clothes; a few, crouching before two or three fires, over which were suspended cauldrons, and where enormous joints of venison were roasting, were preparing the repast for their companions.
At each place of issue two sentinels, motionless, but with eyes and ears on the watch, silently provided for the common safety.
In a compartment separated naturally from the larger one by a block of projecting rock, two women and a man, upon seats rudely cut with the hatchet, were conversing in a low voice.
The two women were Doña Luz and the mother of Loyal Heart; the man who looked at them, while smoking his husk cigarette, and mingled occasionally in the conversation by an interjection drawn from him by surprise, admiration, or joy, was Eusebio, the old Spanish servant, of whom we have often spoken in the course of our narrative.
At the entrance of this compartment, which formed a kind of separate chamber in the cavern, another man was walking backwards and forwards, with his hands behind his back, whistling between his teeth an air which he probably composed as his thoughts dictated.
This man was Black Elk.