“Ah, well do I,” answered Pepé. “I have good reasons to know Elanchovi—but there’s no time to talk of it now; I will settle that business by-and-by, for it’s a secret you can’t comprehend without my help. So indeed it is the young count, and you have found him again! Well that’s enough at present. Now, Bois-Rose, forward! You take to the right of where the shot came from, while this young man and I go to the left. The cowardly rascal who fired will no doubt be trying to turn our camp, and by going both ways, one or other of us will be likely to chance upon him. Away, Bois-Rose, away!”
Hurriedly pronouncing these words, Pepé grasped his rifle and struck off to the left, followed by Tiburcio, who had no other weapon than his knife. The Canadian, suddenly stooping, till his huge body was almost horizontal, glided off to the right under the branches of the trees, and then moved on with a silence and rapidity that showed how accustomed he was to this mode of progression.
The camp-fire was abandoned to the guard of the half-wild horse, that, freshly affrighted by the report of the carbine, once more plunged and reared, until he had almost strangled himself in the noose of his lazo.
Meanwhile the day was beginning to break, and the red light of the fire was every moment growing paler under the first rays of the morning.
“Let us stop here,” said Pepé to Tiburcio, as soon as they had reached a thicket where they could have the advantage of seeing without being seen, and from which they commanded a view of the road leading to the Salto de Agua. “Stand closely behind this sumac bush,” continued he; “I have an idea that this picaron, who has such a crooked sight, will pass this way. If he do, I shall prove to him that the lessons Bois-Rose has given me have not been altogether lost upon me. I manage my piece somewhat better now than when I was in the service of her Catholic majesty. There now, stand close, and not a word above a whisper.”
Tiburcio—or, as we may now call him, Fabian de Mediana—obeyed with pleasure the injunctions of his companion. His spirit, troubled with a few strange words he had heard from Bois-Rose and Pepé, was full of hope that the latter would be able to complete the revelation just begun; and he waited with anxious silence to hear what the ex-carabinier might say.
But the latter was silent. The sight of the young man—whom he had himself assisted in making an orphan, and despoiling not only of his title and wealth, but even of his name—renewed within him the remorse which twenty years had not sufficed to blot out from his memory. Under the dawning light he looked sadly but silently on the face of that child whom he had often seen playing upon the beach of Elanchovi. In the proud glance of the youth, Pepé saw once more the eyes of his high-born mother; and in the elegant and manly form he recognised that of Don Juan de Mediana, his father; but twenty years of a rude and laborious life—twenty years of a struggle with the toils and dangers of the desert—had imparted to Fabian a physical strength far superior to that of him who had given him being.
Pepé at length resolved to break the silence. He could no longer restrain himself, suffering as he was from such bitter memories.
“Keep your eye fixed upon the road,” said he, “at yonder point, where it is lost among the trees. Watch that point whilst I talk to you. It is the way in which Bois-Rose and I do when there is any danger threatening us. At the same time listen attentively to what I say.”
“I listen,” answered Fabian, directing his glance as his companion, had instructed him.