While in the act of verifying this observation, other hoof-prints come under his eye, also shod, but much smaller, being the tracks of a pony. Recent too, evidently made at the same time as the horse’s. He has no need to point them out to the young Indian, who, trained to such craft from infancy upward, has noted them soon as he, and with equally quick intuitiveness is endeavouring to interpret their significance.
Succeeding in this: for both the horse’s track and that of the pony are known to, and almost instantly recognised by him. He has not lived two years in proximity to the estancia of Ludwig Halberger, all the while in friendly intercourse with the naturalist and his family, without taking note of everything; and can tell the particular track of every horse in its stables. Above all is he familiar with the diminutive hoof-marks of Francesca’s pretty pony, which he has more than once trailed across the campo, in the hope of having a word with its rider. Perceiving them now, and so recently made, he gives out an ejaculation of pleased surprise; then looks around, as though expecting to see the pony itself, with its young mistress upon its back. There is no one in sight, however, save the vaqueano and his own followers; the latter behind, halted by command, some of them still in the water, so that they may not ride over the shod-tracks, and obliterate them.
All this while Halberger and his child are within twenty paces of the spot, and seated in their saddles, as when they first drew up side by side. Screened by the trees, they see the Indians, themselves unobserved, while they can distinctly hear every word said. Only two of the party speak aloud, the young cacique and his paleface companion; their speech, of course, relating to the newly-discovered “sign.”
After dismounting, and for a few seconds examining it, Valdez leaps back into his saddle with a show of haste, as if he would at once start off upon the trail of horse and pony.
“There have been only the two here—that’s plain,” he says. “Father and daughter, you think? What a pity we didn’t get up in time to bid ‘good-day’ to them! ’Twould have simplified matters much. You’d then have had your young chick to carry to the cage you intend for it, without the mother bird to make any bother or fluttering in your face; while I might have executed my commission sooner than expected.”
“Carramba!” he continues after a short while spent in considering. “They can’t have gone very far as yet. You say it’s quite twenty miles to the place where the gringo has his headquarters. If so, and they’ve not been in a great hurry to get home—which like enough the girl would, since her dear Cypriano don’t appear to be along—we may come up with them by putting on speed. Let us after them at once! What say you?”
The young Indian, passive in the hands of the older and more hardened sinner, makes neither objection nor protest. Instead, stung by the allusion to “dear Cypriano,” he is anxious as the other to come up with the pony and its rider. So, without another word, he springs back upon his horse, declaring his readiness to ride on.
With eyes directed downward, they keep along the return tracks; having already observed that these come no farther than the ford, and turn back by the water’s edge—
“Aha!” exclaims the vaqueano, pulling up again ere he has proceeded three lengths of his horse; “they’ve left the trail here, and turned off up stream! That wouldn’t be their route home, would it?”
“No,” answers Aguara. “Their nearest way’s along the river, down as far as our old tolderia. After that—”