“You are right. But first tell me how my father, for such I own him to be, is?” said the Don.
“Both he and his wife are dead. His last words were about you,” was Chauncy’s reply.
“Heavens, is it true? I knew that mother was dead, but my adopted father? Did he forgive me before he died?” asked the Don, in a voice choked with emotion.
“He did, and also told me that he found out too late that you had just cause to run away from home. He bequeathed you two-thirds of his fortune,” said the young man.
The two relatives, by adoption, talked for some time.
Then all in the camp but one, who stood guard, went to sleep.
About an hour or so before daybreak, a trampling of hoofs aroused them, and they got to their feet just in time to see their friends coming up.
The Comanche band had been entirely demolished. Not half a dozen of the red-skins had escaped the fury of the brave vaqueroes and peons.
They now came back, bringing a drove of nearly sixty-five horses, which with their lassoes—which they knew how to handle superbly—they had captured.
The next morning the whole band set out for the hacienda of Don Carlos. They were three days in making it as they took their time to it.