“Let us rather try to die like Christians,” replied Bois-Rose.
Then drawing Fabian towards him, he said:
“I scarcely know, my beloved child, what I had dreamed of for you; I am half savage and half civilised, and my dreams partook of both. Sometimes I wished to restore you to the honours of this world—to your honours, your titles—and to add to them all the treasures of the Golden Valley. Then I dreamed only of the splendour of the desert, and its majestic harmonies, which lull a man to his rest, and entrance him at his waking. But I can truly say that the dominant idea in my mind was that of never quitting you. Must that be accomplished in death? So young, so brave, so handsome, must you meet the same fate as a man who would soon be useless in the world?”
“Who would love me when you were gone?” replied Fabian, in a voice which their terrible situation deprived neither of its sweetness nor firmness. “Before I met you, the grave had closed upon all I loved, and the sole living being who could replace them was—you. What have I to regret in this world?”
“The future, my child; the future into which youth longs to plunge, like the thirsty stag into the lake.”
Distant firing now interrupted the melancholy reflections of the old hunter; the Indians were attacking the camp of Don Estevan. The reader knows the result.
Suddenly they heard a voice from the bank, saying, “Let the white men open their ears!”
“It is the ‘Blackbird’ again,” cried Pepé. It was indeed he, supported by two Indians.
“Why should they open their ears?” answered Pepé.
“The whites laugh at the menaces of the ‘Blackbird,’ and despise his promises.”