It was but a glimpse of a form, seen through the bushes, but Wyatt's blood turned cold in every vein. He uttered a half-choked cry, and running back through the bushes, sprang into the firelight. Two or three Spanish soldiers looked at him in amazement, but he was not a coward, and he had pride of a kind. As soon as he leaped back into the firelight he felt that he had made a fool of himself. Henry Ware could not have been there--he and his comrades had been left behind long ago. Coming suddenly out of his thoughts, he had been deceived in the dark by a bush and imagination had done the rest. Yes, it was only fancy! "A rattlesnake! I nearly trod on him," he said in broken Spanish words that he had picked up, and then walked in as careless a manner as he could assume toward the mound where Francisco Alvarez sat. But he could not wholly control himself--the shock had been too great--and his body yet trembled. He did not know it, but the pallor of his face showed through the tan, and Alvarez noticed it. "You have had a fright, Senor Wyatt," he said in his precise, cold English. "What is it?" "Not a fright," replied Wyatt in tones that he sought to make indifferent, "but a start. I nearly trod on a rattlesnake that lay coiled ready to strike, and I got away just in time." The Spaniard regarded him with a penetrating look, but the chilly blue eyes expressed nothing. Yet Francisco Alvarez thought that a bold woodsman like Braxton Wyatt would not show so much fear after a harmless passage with any kind of a snake. "Do you think the five, the party that you said were so much to be dreaded, are still following us?" he asked presently. The pallor showed again for a moment through the tan in Braxton Wyatt's face, but he answered again as carelessly as he could: "It may be. I hate them, but I do not deny that they are bold and resourceful. They have a good boat, and they may follow; but what harm could they do?" "As I told you, they might go before Bernardo Galvez, our Governor General at New Orleans, and spoil the pretty plan that you and I have formed. Galvez is--as he calls himself--a Liberal. He would help these rebels and fight England. How can a Spaniard lend himself to the cause of Republican rebels and injure monarchy? Cannot he foresee, cannot he look ahead a little and tell what rebel success means? It would in the end be as great a blow to Spain as to England. If Kaintock is permitted to grow she will threaten Louisiana. These men in their buckskins are daring and dangerous and we must attend to them!" The Spaniard clenched his hands in anger, and the blue light of his eyes was singularly cruel.