"What to do? It is better that the proposition should come from you, Black-deer, for I am only an adopted son of the tribe." "Good, I will do what my brother desires; I will return shortly." "You see, my friend," Loyal Heart said to Tranquil, when the Chief had left, "that I have not delayed in fulfilling my promises; perhaps, of the hundred warriors we take with us one half will remain on the way, but the survivors will not be the less of great assistance to you." "Thanks, my friend," Tranquil answered; "you know that I have faith in you." As Loyal Heart had foreseen, the Indian warriors sent in pursuit of the prisoner returned to the village without him; they had beaten up the country in vain, the whole night through, without discovering any trace of his passage. The young man had disappeared from the medicine lodge, and it was impossible to find out what means he had employed to effect his escape. The only remark the Comanches made--but it had considerable importance--was that, at a spot in the forest exactly opposite to that where the battle with the Apaches had taken place, the soil was trampled and the bark of the trees nibbled, as if several horses had been standing there for some time, but there was no mark of human feet. The warriors, consequently, returned completely disappointed, and thus augmented the anger of their countrymen. The moment was well selected for the request Black-deer wished to make of the Council of Sachems. He requested the expedition projected by Loyal Heart, not as an intervention in favour of the Whites, for that was only secondary, but as an experiment he desired to attempt, not merely to recapture the fugitive, but his father, who, doubtless, would be posted in ambush at a little distance from the village. As the question thus brought before them was acceptable, the Sachems authorised Black-deer to select one hundred of the most renowned warriors of the nation, who would make the expedition under his orders and those of Loyal Heart. Black-deer spoke to the hachesto, who mounted on the roof of a calli and immediately convened the members of the tribe. When the braves knew that an expedition was meditated, under the command of two such renowned Chiefs, they eagerly offered to join the war party, so that the Chief really had a difficulty in selection. Shortly before sunset one hundred horsemen, armed with lances, guns, axes, and knives, wearing their war moccasins, from the heel of which hung numerous coyote tails, and having round their neck their long ilchochetas, or war whistles, made of a human thigh bone, formed one imposing squadron, drawn up in the finest order on the village square, in front of the ark of the first man. These savage warriors, with their symbolic paint and quaint dresses, offered a strange and terrific appearance.