"Not at all, señor; still I will inform you that I do not at all belong to this cuadrilla, as you call it; I am simply a buffalo hunter and beaver trapper. I do not say that when the opportunity offers to draw a bead on a redskin I refuse to do so; far from it--it is, in fact, an amusement in which I frequently indulge; but soldiering is not at all in my line."
"I thought you an intimate friend of your countryman," the Mexican remarked.
"You were not mistaken," the hunter answered, "we are indeed very old friends, though our avocations are diametrically opposed."
"And on the present occasion, would you refuse the support of your arm in defending the good cause?"
"I do not know what you call the good cause," the Canadian replied, simply, "and, as a foreigner, I care very little to learn what it is. Thanks to heaven your disputes do not concern me the least in the world; but I should consider myself a coward if I abandoned a man with whom I have eaten and drunk, and by whose side I have slept, when a serious danger seems to threaten him. Hence you can safely reckon on me."
"Thanks, caballero," the Mexican said, warmly; "you are a man whose heart is in the right place."
"I believe it is; but I do not see why you should take the trouble to thank me for so natural a thing as this."
Don Aurelio regarded him for a moment with repressed admiration.
"Let me shake your hand," he said to him.
"With pleasure," the hunter simply replied.
During the preceding conversation the sun had risen on the horizon, and beneath the influence of its hot and enlivening beams, which made the pebbles in the road glisten like diamonds, the scenery had lost that stern appearance which the darkness had imparted to it. A warm vapour rose from the ground and formed a species of; transparent fog, that refreshed the atmosphere which was already rendered sultry by the sun; the leaves damp with dew seemed greener, the birds twittered in rivalry, and at times an elk or antelope, startled by the thundering echo of the horses' hoofs, leaped from beneath a bush, and dashed madly away with head thrown back and dilated eye; or the alligators raised their heavy heads from the mud in which they were imbedded, and after gazing at the travellers for a moment, plunged into the lake.