The moment after, a man emerged from the brushwood, his habiliments dripping with water and soiled with mud. It was Cuchillo.
The bandit advanced with an air of imperturbable coolness, though he appeared to limp slightly.
Not one of the four men, so deeply absorbed in their own terrible reflections, showed any astonishment at his presence.
“Carramba! you expected me then?” he cried; “and yet I persisted in prolonging the most disagreeable bath I have ever taken, for fear of causing you all a surprise, for which my self-love might have suffered,” (Cuchillo did not allude to his excursion in the mountains); “but the water of this lake is so icy that rather than perish with cold, I would have run a greater risk than meeting with old friends.”
“Added to this I felt a wound in my leg reopen. It was received some time since, in fact, long ago, in my youth.
“Señor Don Estevan, Don Tiburcio, I am your very humble servant.”
A profound silence succeeded these words. Cuchillo began to feel that he was acting the part of the hare, who takes refuge in the teeth of the hounds; but he endeavoured by a great show of assurance to make the best of a position which was more than precarious.
The old hunter alone glanced towards Fabian, as though to ask what motive this man, with his impudent and sinister manner, and his beard covered with greenish mud, could offer for thus intruding himself upon them.
“It is Cuchillo,” said Fabian, answering Bois-Rose’s look.
“Cuchillo, your unworthy servant,” continued the bandit, “who has been a witness to your prowess, most worthy hunter of tigers. Decidedly,” thought Cuchillo, “my presence, is not so obnoxious to them as I should have supposed.”