"Eagle Head!" cried Loyal, almost bounding from his seat. "Oh, oh! yes, I know him, and God grant that this time. I may settle the old account there is between us. His moccasins have long enough trodden the same path with me and barred my passage." After pronouncing these word with an accent of hatred that made Belhumeur shudder, the hunter, sorry at having allowed the anger which mastered him to appear, resumed his pipe and continued to smoke with a feigned carelessness that did not at all impose upon his companion. The conversation was interrupted. The two hunters appeared to be absorbed in profound reflections, and smoked silently by the side of each other. At length Belhumeur turned towards his companion. "Shall I watch?" he asked. "No," Loyal Heart replied, in a low voice; "sleep, I will be sentinel for you and myself too." Belhumeur, without making the least observation, laid himself down by the fire, and in a few minutes slept profoundly. When the owl hooted its matin song, which seemed to salute the speedy appearance of the sun, Loyal Heart, who during the night had remained motionless as a marble statue, awakened his companion. "It is time," said he. "Very good!" Belhumeur replied, rising immediately. The hunters saddled their horses, descended the hill with precaution, and galloped off upon the track of the Comanches. At this moment the sun appeared radiant in the heavens, dissipating the darkness and illuminating the prairie with its magnificent and reviving radiance. CHAPTER II. THE HUNTERS. A few words now about the personages we have just brought upon the scene, and who are destined to play an important part in this history. Loyal Heart--this name was the only one by which the hunter was known throughout the prairies of the West--enjoyed an immense reputation for skill, loyalty, and courage among the Indian tribes, with whom the chances of his adventurous existence had brought him in relation. All respected him. The white hunters and trappers, whether Spaniards, North Americans, or half-breeds, had a high opinion of his experience of the woods, and often had recourse to his counsels. The pirates of the prairies themselves, thorough food for the gallows, the refuse of civilization, who only lived by rapine and exactions, did not dare to attack him, and avoided as much as possible throwing themselves in his way. Thus this man had succeeded by the sheer force of his intelligence and his will, in creating for himself, and almost unknown to himself, a power accepted and recognized by the ferocious inhabitants of these vast deserts,--a power which he only employed in the common interest, and to facilitate for all the means of following in safety the occupations they had adopted. No one knew who Loyal Heart was, or whence he came; the greatest mystery covered his early years.