by, where we may take refuge
before it's down upon us. Quick, _muchachos_! Mount, and let us away
from here. A moment lost, and it may be too late; _vamonos_!"

Leaping back into their saddles, all three again go off in a gallop; no
longer upon the Indian trail, but in a somewhat different direction, the
gaucho guiding and leading.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

THE CAPTIVE TRAIN.

Just about the same time that the party of trackers had turned to take
departure from the barometer-tree, a cavalcade of a very different kind,
and composed of a greater number of individuals, is moving over the
plain, some forty or fifty miles distant. It is the party being
tracked; Aguara and his band of young braves on return to the _tolderia_
of their tribe; the one now become their permanent place of abode.

More than one change has taken place in the Indian cohort since it
passed over the same ground going downward. In number it is still the
same; but one of them does not sit erect upon his horse; instead, lies
bent across the animal's back, like a sack of corn. There he is fast
tied to keep him from tailing off, for he could do nothing to prevent
this--being dead! He it was who came forth from the _sumac_ grove
wounded by Halberger's bullet, and the wound has proved fatal; this
accounting for the pieces of _sipos_ seen at their camping-place.

Another change in the composition of the party is, that the white man,
Valdez, is no longer with it. Just as Gaspar had conjectured, from
seeing the return tracks of his horse, he had parted company with the
Indians at their first encampment, on the night after the murder.
Another and very different individual, has taken his place at the head
of the troop. The daughter of the murdered man who now rides by the
side of the young Tovas chief!

Though a captive, she is not bound. They have no fear of her attempting
to escape; nor does she even think of it. Though ever so well mounted,
she knows such an attempt would be idle, and on her diminutive roadster,
which she still rides, utterly hopeless. Therefore, since the moment of
being made captive, no thought of escaping by flight had even entered
her mind.

With her long yellow hair hanging dishevelled over her shoulders, her
cheeks white as lilies, and an expression of utter woe in her eyes, she
sits her saddle seemingly regardless of where she is going, or whether
she fall off and get trampled under the hoofs of the horses coming