e poorer chance for us to get her away from him. _Por Dios_! it does
look dark."

After a pause, he continues:

"His making her a captive and bringing her on here, I can quite
understand; that's all natural enough, since his father being dead,
there's no longer any one to hinder him doing as he likes. It's only
odd his chancing to meet master out that day, so far from home. One
would suppose he'd been watching the _estancia_, and saw them as they
went away from it. But then, there were no strange tracks about the
place, nor anywhere near it. And I could discover none by the old
_tolderia_ that seemed at all fresh, excepting those of the shod horse.
But whoever rode him didn't seem to have come anywhere near the house;
certainly not on this side. For all that, he might have approached it
from the other, and then ridden round, to meet the Indians afterwards at
the crossing of the stream. Well, I shall give the whole ground a
better examination once we get back."

"Get back!" he exclaims, repeating his words after a pause, and in
changed tone. "Shall we ever get back? That's the question now, and a
very doubtful one it is. But," he adds, turning to descend from the
scaffold, "it won't help us any on the road my remaining up here. If
the old _cacique's_ body still had the breath in it, may be it might.
But as it hasn't the sooner I bid good-bye to it the better. _Adios_,
Naraguana! _Pasa V. buena noche_!"

Were death itself staring him in the face, instead of seeing it as he
does in the face of another man, Gaspar the gaucho, could not forego a
jest, so much delights he to indulge in his ludicrous humour.

After unburdening himself as above, he once more closes his arms around
the notched post, and lowers himself from the platform.

But again upon the ground, and standing with face toward the fig-tree,
the gravity of its expression is resumed, and he seems to hesitate about
returning to the place of bivouac, where his youthful companions are now
no doubt enjoying the sweets of a profound slumber.

"A pity to disturb them!" he mutters to himself; "and with such a tale
as I have now to tell. But it must be told, and at once. Now that
everything's changed, new plans must be thought of, and new steps taken.
If we're to enter the Indian town at all, it will have to be in a
different way from what we intended. _Caspita_! how the luck's turned
against us!"

And with this desponding reflection, he moves off