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Updated: May 31, 2025
"We are certainly on the same line, and it is not to be wondered at that you find here the same kind of vegetation as in that in which you spent your childhood." The Indian was silent, and seemed musing. Sumichrast and I observed him with some curiosity, and Lucien, surprised at his emotion, looked at him anxiously. "Here is the 'angel-plant," resumed l'Encuerado, suddenly.
Minutes they seemed ages elapsed without any thing more interrupting the silence. Lucien looked at me with a scared face; I pressed my weapon to me in despair at having expended my last charge, when a gunshot was heard ringing out clear and close. "It is l'Encuerado!" cried Lucien. "Yes, my boy," I said, almost frantic. "Reply to your friend!"
We then halted at the foot of a hill, among ebony, mahogany, and oak trees. L'Encuerado took charge of the camp, while I, with my friend and Lucien, climbed a neighboring hill.
It was Gringalet, an elegantly although strongly made greyhound, which had been a companion of my boy's from infancy, l'Encuerado having brought him up "by hand" for his young master. Gringalet was an orphan from the time of his birth, and had found in the Indian a most attentive foster-parent. Three times a day he gave his adopted child milk through a piece of rag tied over the neck of a bottle.
A coyote doubtless that which l'Encuerado had wounded the day before lay half devoured on the ground, and more than fifty guests were coming in turn for their share, and to tear, in turn, a strip of flesh from the carcass. "What frightful creatures!" cried Lucien. "I can't think why the nasty smell does not drive them away."
The lamp was dying out, and was filling the outer chamber with a nasty smell, which gave the finishing-stroke to our unpleasant feelings. L'Encuerado and Lucien were the first to leave the cave; from it I afterwards emerged with Sumichrast, both being quite blinded, when we reached the open air, by the overpowering rays of the sun.
A rumbling noise made us stop and listen attentively, but l'Encuerado, who was more expert than we were in making out distant sounds, told us that it was a torrent. Squirrels gambolled on the branches as we passed by, and toucans seemed to tempt us to stop; but we were all anxious to reach the waterfall. Ere long, oaks and birches, and afterwards guava-trees, surrounded us on every side.
I advanced in the direction in which I had heard the voice of our four-footed companion, and suddenly came upon him baying furiously at a young cougar, which Sumichrast ran towards, but the animal fled into the wood. "Where did you turn out this fellow, Gringalet?" asked l'Encuerado, quite seriously.
The next morning l'Encuerado started alone on the raft; for we had resolved to cross the savannah on foot, and thus escape, for an hour or two, the insects which took advantage of our forced immobility in order to bleed us at their leisure. Flocks of black vultures hovered high up in the sky, bending their course towards a spot not very far from the river bed.
The latter conversed with the Indian in the Mistec tongue, an idiom which Lucien alone could understand, he having been taught it by l'Encuerado. From the way in which the old man scanned us, I imagined that l'Encuerado had represented us to him as white sorcerers of no ordinary skill. Coyotepec or "Stone Wolf" might have been about seventy years of age.
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