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For, although expecting enemies both from east and west, he knows that, coming from either side, they will most likely approach by the Pilcomayo's bank; the former by the trail leading up the river, the latter by the same going down. It is not the first time for him to be standing on that elevated spot.
No track there, no sign to show, that either horses or men ever passed up the Pilcomayo's bank. "Caspita!" exclaims the gaucho, in spiteful tone. "It is as I anticipated; blind as an old mule with a tapojo over its eyes. May the fiends take that tormenta!"
The corpse alone lies still; the captive girl also keeping her seat, to all seeming heedless of what has startled them, and caring not what new misfortune may be in store for her. Her cup of sorrow is already full, and she recks not if it run over. At the crisis described, the Indian party is no longer travelling upon the Pilcomayo's bank, nor near it.
The sun has gone down over the Gran Chaco, and its vast grassy plains and green palm-groves are again under the purple of twilight. The scene we are about to depict is upon the Pilcomayo's bank, some twenty miles above the old tomeria of the Tovas Indians, and therefore thirty from the house of Ludwig Halberger now his no more, but a house of mourning.
They are approaching it by separate routes, and from different quarters of the compass; one party coming up the Pilcomayo's bank, and making straight for the old tolderia, a second moving towards the same place on the down-river trail; while the third, away from the river, and out upon the open plain, is heading more direct for the estancia itself.
Half an hour of quick cantering brings them back upon the Pilcomayo's bank; not where they had parted from it, but higher up, near the mouth of the arroyo. For Gaspar did not deem it necessary to return to that prophetic tree, whose forecast has proved so unfailing.
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