He promised to come back before dark, and to be sure that if he did get lost he could follow up his own tracks, or failing to do this, the others could track him, he stepped heavily and left a plain trail behind him, which any Indian boy able to walk could follow. The others remained near the fire, for they had no curiosity to examine the woods as the French naturalist had.
The trapper told the others that this was a good time to clean their firearms, and the whole three set about it.
The rifles and revolvers were cleaned and oiled well, and new loads put in, in the place of those that had been drawn.
Whenever Ralph, or for that matter either of the others, thought of the coolness of the naturalist, the evening before, in making use of his umbrella even when death seemed to stare him in the face, they could not help laughing.
They all admired the pluck of the Frenchman, and concluded that the umbrella, which they had always looked upon with disdain, was not such a bad thing to carry after all.
Little did the three men think that before the sun had set again, they would witness the little naturalist display a degree of nerve and cunning that would have shamed them all.
Little did they think, that the humble umbrella was to be put to a use which for adaptability and a ludicrous sight had never been equaled before. All unconscious of what they were to see, and of the amount of fun in store for them, the three men whiled away the morning as well as they possibly could.
The young hunter explained more fully to his comrades, how he had come to be captured by the Comanches.
The two others applauded him when he told how he had saved the Donna Iola from the panther, and afterward from the Indians.
“Jest like a romance, fur all the world. But ye say that the Donna Iola war from the South. I knew a little gal down thar named Iola Montgomery. Her daddy’s an American, an’ her mother’s dead. That’s a singular name, an’ I don’t doubt but what your Donna an’ mine are the same. If they are, then ye may be sure thet Don Carlos, az the American is called by the Mexicans, will follow up the trail with his peons and vaqueroes.