The precautions taken by Eagle Head to conceal his march were good as regarded the whites, whose senses, less kept upon the watch than those of partisans and hunters, and little acquainted with Indian stratagems, are almost incapable of directing their course in these vast solitudes without a compass; but for men like Loyal Heart and Belhumeur they were, in every respect, insufficient. The two bold partisans did not lose the track for an instant. Accustomed to the zig-zags and devices of the Indian warriors, they did not allow themselves to be deceived by the sudden turns, the counter marches, the false halts, in a word, by any of the obstacles which the Comanches had planted so freely on their route. And then, there was one thing of which the Indians had not dreamed, and which revealed as clearly the direction of their march as if they had taken the pains to mark it with stakes. We have said that the hunters had, close to the ruins of a cabin, found a bloodhound fastened to a tree, and that this bloodhound, when set free, after bestowing a few caresses on Belhumeur, had set off; his nose to the wind, to rejoin his master, who was no other than the old Spaniard--in fact, he did rejoin him. The traces of the bloodhound, which the Indians never dreamed of effacing, for the very simple reason that they did not observe that he was with them, were to be seen all along, and for hunters so skilful as Loyal Heart and Belhumeur, this was an Ariadne's thread which nothing could break. The hunters therefore rode tranquilly on with their guns across the saddle and accompanied by their rastreros, in the track of the Comanches, who were far from suspecting that they had such a rearguard. Every evening Loyal Heart stopped at the precise place where Eagle Head had, on the previous day, established his camp, for such was the diligence of the two men that the Indians only preceded them by a few leagues; the trappers could easily have passed them, if it had been their wish to do so; but, for certain reasons, Loyal Heart confined himself to following them for some time longer. After having passed the night in a quiet glade, on the banks of a clear rivulet, whose soft murmur had lulled them to sleep, the hunters were preparing to resume their journey, their horses were saddled, they were eating a slice of elk, standing, like people in a hurry to depart, when Loyal Heart, who, during the whole morning had not spoken a word, turned towards his companion, and said: "Let us sit down a minute, there is no occasion to hurry, since Eagle Head has rejoined his tribe." "Be it so," replied Belhumeur, laying himself down upon the grass. "We can talk a bit." "I cannot think how it was I did not imagine these cursed Comanches had a war detachment in the neighbourhood! It is impossible for us two to think of taking a camp in which there are five hundred warriors."