The Trapper's Daughter Part 49

"But," Don Pablo objected, "the grizzly bear is invulnerable; bullets flatten on its skull, and glide off its fur."

"That is perfectly true; still, you forget there is a spot where it can be hit."

"I know it, the eye; but it is almost impossible to hit it at the first shot; to do so a man must be endowed with marvellous skill, not to say admirable courage and coolness."

"Thank you," Valentine replied with, a smile; "now that our enemy is dead, I would ask you to look and tell me where I hit it."

The Mexicans stooped down quickly; the bear was really dead. Its gigantic corpse, which Curumilla was already preparing to strip of its magnificent coat, covered a s.p.a.ce of nearly ten feet. The hunter's bullet had entered its right eye; the two gentlemen uttered a cry of admiration.

"Yes," Valentine said, replying to their thought, "it was not a bad shot; but be a.s.sured that this animal enjoys an usurped reputation, owing to the habit it has of attacking man, whom, however, it hardly ever conquers."

"But look, my friend, at those sharp claws; why, they are nearly six inches long."

"That is true; I remember a poor Comanche, on whose shoulder a grizzly let his paw fall, and completely smashed it. But, is it an interesting sport? I confess that it possesses an irresistible attraction for me."

"You are quite at liberty, my friend," said Don Miguel, "to find a delight in fighting such monsters, and I can account for it; the life you lead in the desert has so familiarised you with danger, that you no longer believe in it; but we dwellers in towns have, I confess, an invincible respect and terror for this monster."

"Nonsense, Don Miguel, how can you say when I have seen you engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with tigers?"

"That is possible, my friend; I would do so again, if necessary--but a jaguar is not a grizzly."

"Come, come, I will not tease you any longer. While Curumilla prepares our breakfast, I will go down into the ravine. Help my friend to roast a piece of my game, and I am sure when you have tasted it, the exquisite flavour will make you quite alter your opinion about friend Grizzly."

And carelessly throwing his rifle on his shoulder, which he had reloaded, Valentine then entered the chaparral, in which he almost immediately disappeared.

The game, as Valentine called the grizzly, weighed about four hundred weight. After flaying it with that dexterity the Indians possess, Curumilla, aided by the two Mexicans, hung up the body to a branch, that bent beneath its weight; he cut steaks from the loin, and took out the pluck, which regular hunters consider the most delicate part of the beast; and then, while Don Miguel and Don Pablo lit the fire, and laid the steaks on the ashes, the Indian entered the cave.

Don Pablo and his father, long accustomed to the Araucano chief's way of behaving, made no remark, but went on with the preparations for breakfast actively, the more so because the night's fatigues and their long privations had given them an appet.i.te which the smell of the cooking meat only heightened.

Still, the meal had been ready some time, and Valentine had not returned. The two gentlemen were beginning to feel anxious. Nor did Curumilla emerge either from the cavern in which he had now been upwards of an hour. The Mexicans exchanged a glance.

"Can anything have happened?" Don Miguel asked.

"We must go and see," said Don Pablo.

They rose; Don Pablo proceeded toward the cave, while his father went to the end of the platform. At this moment Valentine arrived on one side, Curumilla on the other, holding two young bearskins in his hands.

"What does that mean?" Don Pablo in his surprise could not refrain from asking.

The Indian smiled. "It was a she-bear," he said.

"Are we going to breakfast?" Valentine asked.

"Whenever you like, my friend," Don Miguel answered; "we were only waiting for you."

"I have been gone a long time."

"More than an hour."

"It was not my fault. Just fancy, down there it is as dark as in an oven. I had great difficulty in finding our friend's body; but, thanks to heaven, it is now in the ground, and protected from the teeth of the coyotes and the other vermin of the prairie."

Don Miguel took his hand and pressed it tenderly, while tears of grat.i.tude ran down his cheeks.

"Valentine," he said, with great emotion. "You are better than all of us; you think of everything; no circ.u.mstance, however grave it may be, can make you forget what you regard in the light of a duty. Thanks, my friend, thanks, for having placed in the ground the poor general's body; you have made me very happy."

"That will do," Valentine said, as he turned his head away, not to let the emotion he felt in spite of himself, be noticed; "suppose we feed? I am fearfully hungry; the sun is rising, and we have not yet quitted that frightful labyrinth in which we so nearly left our bones."

The hunters set down round the fire, and began sharply attacking the meal that awaited them. When they had finished eating, which did not take long, thanks to Valentine, who continually urged them to take double mouthfuls, they rose and prepared to start again.

"Let us pay great attention, caballeros," the hunter said to them, "and carefully look around us, for I am greatly mistaken if we do not find a trail within an hour."

"What makes you suppose so?"

"Nothing, I have found no sign," Valentine answered, with a smile; "but I feel a foreboding that we shall soon find the man we have been seeking so long."

"May heaven hear you, my friend! Don Miguel exclaimed.

"Forward! Forward!" Valentine said, as he set out.

His comrades followed him. At this moment the sun appeared above the horizon, the forest awoke as if by enchantment, and the birds, concealed beneath the foliage, began their matin hymn, which they sing daily to salute the sun.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A MOTHER'S LOVE.

As we have said, Madame Guillois was installed by her son at the winter village of the Comanches, and the Indians gladly welcomed the mother of the adopted son of their tribe. The most commodious lodge was immediately placed at her service, and the most delicate attentions were lavished on her.

The redskins are incontestably superior to the whites in all that relates to hospitality. A guest is sacred to them to such an extent, that they become his slaves, so to speak, so anxious are they to satisfy all his desires, and even his slightest caprices.

After Father Seraphin had warned Red Cedar to be on his guard, he returned to Madame Guillois in order to watch more directly over it. The worthy missionary was an old acquaintance and friend of the Comanches, to whom he had been useful on several occasions, and who respected in him not the priest, whose sublime mission they could not understand, but the good and generous man, ever ready to devote himself to his fellow men.

Several weeks pa.s.sed without producing any great change in the old lady's life. Sunbeam, on her own private authority, had const.i.tuted herself her handmaiden, amusing her with her medley of Indian-Spanish and French, attending to her like a mother, and trying, by all the means in her power, to help her to kill time. So long as Father Seraphin remained near her, Madame Guillois endured her son's absence very patiently. The missionary's gentle and paternal exhortations made her--not forget, because a mother never does that--but deceive herself as to the cruelty of this separation.

Unhappily, Father Seraphin had imperious duties to attend to which he could no longer neglect; to her great regret he must recommence his wandering life, and his mission of self-denial and suffering, while carrying to the Indian tribes, the light of the gospel, and the succour of religion. Father Seraphin was in Madame Guillois's sight a link of the chain that attached her to her son; she could speak about him with the missionary, who knew the most secret thoughts of her heart, and could by one word calm her alarm, and restore her courage. But when he left her for the first time since her arrival in America, she really felt alone, and lost her son once again, as it were. Thus the separation was cruel; and she needed all her Christian resignation and long habit of suffering to bear meekly the fresh blow that struck her.

Indian life is very dull and monotonous, especially in winter, in the heart of the forest, in badly built huts, open to all the winds, when the leafless trees are covered with h.o.a.r-frost; the villages are half buried beneath the snow, the sky is gloomy, and during the long nights the hurricane may be heard howling, and a deluge of rain falling.

Alone, deprived of a friend in whose bosom she could deposit the overflowing of her heart, Madame Guillois gradually fell into a gloomy melancholy, from which nothing could arouse her. A woman of the age of the hunter's mother does not easily break through all her habits to undertake a journey like that she had made across the American desert.

However simple and frugal the life of a certain cla.s.s of society may be in Europe, they still enjoy a certain relative comfort, far superior to what they may expect to find in Indian villages, where objects of primary necessity are absent, and life is reduced to its simplest expression.

Thus, for instance, a person accustomed to work in the evening in a comfortable chair, in the chimney corner, by the light of a lamp, in a well-closed room, would never grow used to sit on the beaten ground, crouching over a fire, whose smoke blinds her, in a windowless hut, only illumined by the flickering flame of a smoky torch.

When Madame Guillois left Havre, she had only one object, one desire, to see her son again; every other consideration must yield to that: she gladly sacrificed the comfort she enjoyed to find the son whom she believed she had lost, and who filled her heart.