If the black vultures, still in streaming flight above, have hopes of getting a repast there, they may now feel assured of its being a plenteous one.
Chapter Seven.
Los Indios!
Parting from the despised carcase of the ram the hunters press onward, the younger with mental resolve to return to it, come back what way they will. Its grand spiral horns have caught his fancy: such a pair would grace any hall in Christendom; and, though he cannot call the trophy his own, since it fell not to his gun, he intends appropriating it.
Only for a brief moment does the young Englishman reflect about them; in the next they are out of his mind. For, glancing at the Mexican’s face, he again sees that look of anxious uneasiness noted before. It had returned soon as the exciting incident of the sheep-shooting was over. And knowing the cause, he shares it; no more thinking about the chase or its trophies.
They say but little now, having sufficient work to occupy them without wasting time in words. For beyond the opening where the carneros were encountered, they find no path—not so much as a trace made by animals—and have to make one for themselves. As the trees stand close, with lianas interlacing, the Mexican is often compelled to use his macheté for hewing out a passage-way; which he does with an accompaniment of carrambas! thick as the underwood he chops at.
Thus impeded, they are nearly an hour in getting through the chapparal, though the distance passed is less than the half of a mile. But at length they accomplish it, arriving on the mesas outer edge, close to that of the cliff. There the tall timber ends in a skirting of low bushes, and their view is no longer obstructed. North, east, and west the llano is under their eyes to the horizon’s verge, twenty miles at least being within the scope of their vision.
They aim not to scan it so far. For at a distance of little more than ten they observe that which at once fixes their glance: a dun yellowish disc—a cloud—with its base resting upon the plain.