The Indian bowed and folded his arms on his chest. A quarter of an hour later, the hunters reached the encampment of the redskins, when they found that Black Cat had spoken the truth, for he had one hundred picked warriors with him, so cleverly concealed in the gra.s.s that ten paces off it was impossible to perceive them.

Black Cat drew Valentine aside, and led him a short distance from the bivouac.

"Let my brother look," he said.

The hunter then saw, a little way off, the fires of the gambusinos. Red Cedar had placed his camp against a hillside, which prevented the hunters seeing it. The squatter fancied he had thrown Valentine out, and this night, for the first time since he knew he was pursued, he allowed his people to light a fire.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE COMBAT.

Red Cedar's camp was plunged in silence; all were asleep, save three or four gambusinos who watched over the safety of their comrades, and two persons who, carelessly reclining before a tent erected in the centre of the camp, were conversing in a low voice. They were Red Cedar and Fray Ambrosio.

The squatter seemed suffering from considerable anxiety; with his eye fixed on s.p.a.ce, he seemed to be sounding the darkness and guessing the secrets which the night that surrounded him bore in its bosom.

"Gossip," the monk said, "do you believe that we have succeeded in hiding our trail from the white hunters?"

"Those villains are dogs at whom I laugh; my wife would suffice to drive them away with a whip," Red Cedar replied, disdainfully; "I know all the windings of the prairie, and have acted for the best."

"Then, we are at length freed from our enemies," the monk said, with a sigh of relief.

"Yes, gossip," the squatter remarked with a grin; "now you can sleep calmly."

"Ah," said the monk, "all the better."

At this moment, a bullet whistled over the Spaniard's head, and flattened against one of the tent poles.

"Malediction!" the squatter yelled, as he sprang up; "those mad wolves again. To arms, lads; here are the redskins."

Within a few seconds, all the gambusinos were alert and ambuscaded behind the bales that formed the wall of the camp. At the same moment, fearful yells, followed by a terrible discharge, burst forth from the prairie.

The squatter's band comprised about twenty resolute men, with the pirates he had enlisted. The gambusinos did not let themselves be terrified; they replied by a point-blank discharge at a numerous band of hors.e.m.e.n galloping at full speed on the camp. The Indians rode in every direction, uttering ferocious yells, and brandishing burning torches which they constantly hurled into the camp.

The Indians, as a general rule, only attack their enemies by surprise; when they have no other object in view but pillage, as soon as they are discovered and meet with a vigorous resistance, they cease a combat which has become objectless to them. But on this occasion the redskins seemed to have given up their ordinary tactics, so obstinately did they a.s.sail the gambusino intrenchments; frequently repulsed, they returned with renewed ardour, fighting in the open and trying to crush their enemies by their numbers.

Red Cedar, terrified by the duration of a combat in which his bravest comrades had perished, resolved to attempt a final effort, and conquer the Indians by daring and temerity. By a signal he collected his three sons around him, with Andres Garote and Fray Ambrosio; but the Indians did not leave them the time to carry out the plan they had formed; they returned to the charge with incredible fury, and a cloud of incendiary arrows and lighted torches fell on the camp from all sides at once.

The fire added its horrors to those of the combat, and ere long the camp was a burning fiery furnace. The redskins, cleverly profiting by the disorder the fire caused among the gambusinos, escaladed the bales, invaded the camp, rushed on the whites, and a hand-to-hand fight commenced. In spite of their courage and skill in the use of arms, the gambusinos were overwhelmed by the ma.s.ses of their enemies; a few minutes longer, and all would be over with Red Cedar's band.

The squatter resolved to make a supreme effort to save the few men still left him; taking Fray Ambrosio aside, who, since the beginning the action, had constantly fought by his side, he explained his intentions to him; and when he felt that the monk would certainly carry out his plans, he rushed with incredible fury into the thickest of the fight, and felling or stabbing the redskins who stood in his way, succeeded in entering the tent.

Dona Clara, with her head stretched forward, seemed to be anxiously listening to the noises outside. Two paces from her, the squatter's wife was dying; a bullet had pa.s.sed through her skull. On seeing Red Cedar, the maiden folded her arms on her bosom, and wailed.

"_Voto a Dios!_" the brigand exclaimed. "She is still here. Follow me, senora, we must be off."

"No," the Spaniard answered, resolutely. "I will not go."

"Come, child, obey; do not oblige me to employ violence; time is precious."

"I will not go, I tell you," the maiden repeated.

"For the last time, will you follow me--yes or no?"

Dona Clara shrugged her shoulders. The squatter saw that any discussion was useless, and he must settle the question by force; so, leaping over the corpse of his wife, he tried to seize the girl. But the latter, who had watched all his movements, bounded like a startled fawn, drew a dagger from her breast, and with flashing eye, quivering nostrils, and trembling lips, she prepared to go through a desperate struggle.

There must be an end of this, so the squatter raised his sabre, and with the flat dealt such a terrible blow on the girl's delicate arm, that she let the dagger fall, and uttered a shriek of pain. But the unhappy girl stooped at once to pick up her weapon with her left hand; Red Cedar took advantage of this movement, bounded upon her, and made her a girdle of his powerful arms. The maiden, who had hitherto resisted in silence, shrieked with all the energy of despair--

"Help, Shaw, help!"

"Ah!" Red Cedar howled; "he, then, was the traitor! Let him come, if he dare."

And, raising the girl in his arms, he ran toward the entrance of the hut, but he fell back suddenly, with a ghastly oath: a man barred his pa.s.sage, and that man was Valentine.

"Ah, ah!" the hunter said, with a sarcastic smile; "There you are again, Red Cedar. _Caray_, my master, you seem in a hurry."

"Let me pa.s.s," the squatter yelled, as he c.o.c.ked a pistol.

"Pa.s.s?" Valentine repeated, with a laugh, while carefully watching the bandit's movements. "You are in a great haste to leave our company.

Come, no threats, or I kill you like a dog."

"I shall kill you, villain," Red Cedar exclaimed, pulling with a convulsive movement the trigger of the pistol.

But, although the squatter had been so quick, Valentine was not less so; he stooped smartly to escape the bullet, which did not strike him, and raised his rifle, but did not dare fire, for Red Cedar had fallen back to the end of the tent, and employed the maiden as a buckler. At the sound of the shot Valentine's comrades hurried up to the tent, which was simultaneously invaded by the Indians.

The few gambusinos who survived their companions, about seven or eight, whom Fray Ambrosio had collected by the squatter's orders, guessing what was occurring, and desiring to aid their chief, crept stealthily up, and seizing the tent ropes, cut them all at once.

The ma.s.s of canvas, no longer supported, fell in, burying and dragging down with it all who were beneath it. There was a moment of terrible confusion among the Indians and hunters, which Red Cedar cleverly employed to step out of the tent and mount a horse Fray Ambrosio held in readiness for him. But, at the moment he was going to dash off, Shaw barred his pa.s.sage.

"Stop, father," he shouted, as he boldly seized the bridle, "give me that girl."

"Back, villain, back," the squatter howled, grinding his teeth; "back!"

"You shall not pa.s.s," Shaw continued. "Give me Dona Clara!"

Red Cedar felt that he was lost: Valentine, Don Miguel, and their comrades, at length freed from the tent, were hurrying up at full speed.

"Wretch!" he exclaimed.

And, making his horse bound, he cut his son down with his sabre. The witnesses uttered a cry of horror, while the gambusinos, starting at full speed, pa.s.sed like a whirlwind through the dense ma.s.s of foes.

"Oh!" Don Miguel shrieked, "I will save my daughter."

And leaping on a horse, he rushed in pursuit of the bandits; the hunters and Indians, leaving the burning camp to a few plunderers, also started after them. But suddenly an incomprehensible thing occurred: a terrible, superhuman noise was heard; the horses, going at full speed, stopped, neighing with terror; and the pirates, hunters, and redskins, instinctively raising their eyes to Heaven, could not restrain a cry of horror.