The caravan still advanced, and soon left the wood to debouch upon a plain intersected by numerous rivulets, which wound through a hard and rocky soil. At the moment when the last man left the edge of the forest, the dense shrubs that bordered the road noiselessly parted and made room for the head of an Indian, who looked out cautiously, after having, so to speak, smelt the air around him. His eyes settled on the little troop, which they followed until it had bent to the left and entirely disappeared; then carefully removing the twigs, the Indian thrust forward the rest of his body and crawled out. He soon found himself in the middle of the road, and began looking around him again in all directions, after which his face assumed a marked expression of satisfaction.
"Matai," he said, smiling so as to show his long white teeth.
And then he began running with the lightness of a llama in the traces of the caravan. On reaching the spot where the road formed a bend, he thrust out his head, and then hurriedly withdrawing it, climbed up the side of a wood-clad height and disappeared.
This man was Tcharanguii, the feared and formidable chief of the Jaos, one of the most powerful tribes of the twelve Molucho nations. For some minutes the rustling of parted branches might be heard, then all became silent again, the sole interruption being the imposing sounds of the desert.
They travelled the whole day without any incidents: the heat which had so incommoded them all during the first few days, had been succeeded by a temperature which hourly became colder. The foliage of the trees assumed a deeper tinge of green; the singing birds of the llanos, whose sweet notes ravished the ear, had been succeeded by the eagles, vultures, and other birds of prey, which formed immense circles in space while uttering the hoarse and strange cries peculiar to them.
The sky, which had hitherto been of such a pure blue, was beginning here and there to assume greyish tones and coppery reflections, which formed a contrast with the dull whiteness of the water of the torrents which fell in cascades from the snowy peaks of the mountains, down whose flanks they dragged with a dull roar masses of rock and enormous firs which they uprooted in their passage.