While perplexed, and despairing of being able to get Fernand intoxicated, an explanation suggests itself. His fellow tippler may be shamming, as himself?
Pretending to look out of the tent, he twists his eyes away so far, that, from the front, little else than their whites can be seen. But enough of the retina is uncovered to receive an impression from behind; this showing the mestizo tilting his cup, and spilling its contents among the moss!
He now knows he is being watched, as well as guarded. And of his vigilant sentinel there seems but one way to disembarrass himself.
As the thought of it flits across his brain, his eyes flash with a feverish light, such as when one intends attacking by stealth, and with the determination to kill. For he must either kill the man by his side, or give up what is to himself worth more than such a life—his own liberty.
It may be his beloved master yet lives, and there is a chance to succour him. If dead, he will find his body, and give it burial. He remembers the promise that morning mutually declared between them—to stand and fall together—he will keep his part of it. If Clancy has fallen, others will go down too; in the end, if need be, himself. But not till he has taken, or tried to take, a terrible and bloody vengeance. To this he has bound himself, by an oath sworn in the secret recesses of his heart.
Its prelude is nigh, and the death of the Indian half-breed is to initiate it. For the fugitive slave knows the part this vile caitiff has played, and will not scruple to kill him; the less that it is now an inexorable necessity. He but waits for the opportunity—has been seeking it for some time.
It offers at length. Turning suddenly, and detecting the mestizo in his act of deception, he asks laughingly why he should practice such a trick. Then stooping forward, as if to verify it, his right arm is seen to lunge out with something that glitters in his hand. It is the blade of a bowie-knife.
In an instant the arm is drawn back, the glittering gone off the blade, obliterated by blood! For it has been between the ribs, and through the heart of the mestizo; who, slipping from his seat, falls to the floor, without even a groan!
Grasping Clancy’s gun, which chances to be in the tent, and then blowing out the light, the mulatto moves off, leaving but a dead body behind him.
Once outside, he looks cautiously around the encampment, scanning the tents and the ground adjacent to them. He sees the big fire still red, but not flaming. He can make out the forms of men lying around it—all of them, for him fortunately, asleep.