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Here the speaker paused for a moment as if waiting for a reply. None was given. "Wacoes!" he continued, "our beloved chief has fallen, and our hearts are sad. But it glads them to know that his death has been avenged. There lies his slayer, still wearing his hated scalp. What brave warrior claims the trophy? Let him stop forth and take it!"
"An estampeda!" said the cibolero, in a husky voice; "my poor mules all gone every one of them! A curse upon Indian duplicity!" Carlos had not the slightest doubt but that the marauders were the Wacoes the very same from whom he had purchased the mules.
One of the warriors stepped forward to the midst, and by a signal intimated that he wished to be heard. A breathless silence followed, and the warrior began: "Wacoes! our hearts are sad when they should otherwise rejoice. In the midst of victory a great calamity has fallen upon us. We have lost our father, our brother! Our great chief he whom we all loved has fallen. Alas!
When, in addition to this service, it was seen how the cibolero had fought on their side, killing several of their foes, the hearts of the Wacoes were filled with gratitude; but now that it became known that the pale-faced warrior was the avenger of their beloved chief, their gratitude swelled into enthusiasm, and for some minutes their loud expressions of it alone could be heard.
He had already obtained some dressed robes from the Indians. For these he had parted with everything for which an Indian would trade. Even the buttons from off his jacket and those of his men, the bullion bands and shining tags of their sombreros everything about them that glittered! Their arms of course not. These the Wacoes did not want.
"It may have been it must have been by Heavens! it must " "What, master?" "The Pane whistle!" "Just what I was thinking, master. The Comanches never whoop so the Kiawa never. I have not heard that the Wacoes give such a signal. Why not Pane? Besides, their being afoot that's like Pane!" A sudden revulsion had taken place in the mind of the cibolero.
Such skilled warriors as the Panes would not. They would see the trail of the Wacoes leading to the cibolero's own camp they would soon discover the lodges perhaps they had already made their attack perhaps
"No, Antonio," he said, after making these reflections, "our enemies are the Wacoes themselves." "Master," replied Antonio, "I hope not." "I hope not, too, camarado. I had taken a fancy to our friends of but yesterday: I should be sorry to find them our foes but I fear it is even so."
He noticed, too, that the "running" gangs came from the north, while the Wacoes were hunting to the southward of his camp! It could not be the latter that were disturbing them. Who then? On the third night after his trade with the Indians, Carlos had retired to rest with his people. Antonio kept watch until midnight, at which hour he was to be relieved by one of the peons.
The silk dress for Rosita, the luxuries for his old mother, the new house, the farm, were all pleasant dreams to Carlos; but he indulged a dream of a still pleasanter nature a dream that eclipsed them all; and his hopes of its realisation lay in that one more visit to the country of the Wacoes. Carlos believed that his poverty alone was the barrier that separated him from Catalina.
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