Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/31

Rh because they had stolen the blacksmith's hammer and the ham-bones. So they mounted and fled.

"Well, you know, I thought this was an Indian's lie—a lie all full of truth. I told him so. I took him and tied him to a tree, and I tied the other man and the big boy. The woman I did not tie. Miss Eunice, applaud me for that. I believe you have a tender heart to the redskins, and I determined to wait till morning. But in half an hour I heard the rattle of the mare's heels, and up came Harry to say that all was well."

"And all's well that ends well."

"Yes, Ransom; no matter what it is. I did not know I should ever feel hungry again."

"But, dear Miss Perry, how thoughtless I am! For the love of Heaven, pray go into your tent and go to sleep. How can we be grateful enough that she is safe?"

Then he called her back.

"Stop, one moment, Miss Perry; we are very near each other now. What may happen before morning, none of us know. I must say to you, therefore, now, what but for this I suppose I should not have dared to say to you, that she is dearer to me than my life. If we had not found her, oh, Miss Perry, I should have died! I would have tried to do my duty by you, indeed; but, my heart would have been broken."

"Yes. I knew how eager you were, and how wretched. Pray, understand, that my wretchedness and my loss would have been the same as yours. Good night! God bless her and you!"

A revelation so abrupt startled Eunice, if it did not wholly surprise her. But she was too completely exhausted by her excitements of every kind even to try to think, or to try to answer. She did not so much as speak, as he turned away, and only bade him good- bye, by her kindly look and smile.

It was late when they met at breakfast. Harrod would gladly have permitted a day's halt after the fatigues of the night, but not here. They must make a part of the day's march, and already all of the train which could be prepared was ready for a start. Inez appeared even later than the others. But she was ready dressed for traveling. The White Hawk welcomed her as fondly and proudly as if she were her mother, and had gained some right of property in her. Eunice was so fond and so happy, and Harrod said frankly that he did not dare to tell her how happy the good news made him when it came to him.

"Woe's me," said poor Inez, hardly able to keep from crying. "Woe's me, that, because I was a fool, brave men have had to ride and fair women to watch. You need none of you be afraid that I shall ever stray two inches from home again."

But, as she ate, Harrod drew from her, bit by bit, her own account of her wanderings.

"And to think," said he, "that this girl here, knows how to follow a trail better than I do, and finds one that I have lost. I believe the flowers rise under your tread, Miss Inez, for on the soft ground yonder by the lick we could not find your foot-tread. Could it have been hers that frightened me so?"

Then he told her how they were sure they caught the traces of an Indian boy, and thought he had been stepping with his feet turned outward in her foot-prints.

"And pray what did you think I wore, Captain. I had taken off my shoes, and I was walking in the moccasins the Señora Troviño gave me at Nacogdoches."

"And I did not know your foot-fall when I saw it. I will never call myself a woodsman again!"

CHAPTER XIV.

A PACKET OF LETTERS.

"I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters."

it is time that the reader should welcome the party of travelers, no longer enthusiastic about camp-life, to the hospitalities—wholly unlike anything Inez had ever seen before—of San Antonio de Bexar.

The welcome of her dear aunt, of Major Barelo,—indeed, one may say, of all the gentlemen and ladies of the garrison, had been most cordial. The energy of the march made it a matter of nine days' wonder, and the young Spanish gentlemen thanked all gods and goddesses for the courage which had brought, by an adventure so bold, such charming additions to the circle of their society. Donna Maria Dolores was not disappointed in her niece; nor was she nearly so much terrified by this wild American sister-in-law as she had expected. And Inez found her aunt, ah! ten times more lovely than she had dared to suppose.

But the impressions of both ladies will be best given by the transcript of three of their letters,—which have escaped the paper- mills of three quarters of a century,—written about a week after their arrival. True, these letters were written with a painful