Wyatt urged that Paul be held indefinitely.  He would not talk at first, but they must get from him the fullest details about the settlements in Kentucky, the weak points, where to attack and when.  If the settlements were left alone they would certainly spread all over Kentucky and in time across the Mississippi into the Spanish domain.  Spain was far away, and she could not drive them back.  But the Spaniards could urge on the tribes again, and with a hidden hand, send them arms and ammunition.  White men with cannon could even join the warriors, and Spain might convincingly say that she knew nothing of if.

The words of the renegade pleased Francisco Alvarez.  Deep down in his crafty heart he loved intrigue and cunning.

“Yes, we’ll hold him,” he said.  “He is a trespasser here, although I will admit that he is not the kind of person that I expected to find in the heart of this vast wilderness.”

He glanced at Paul, who was sitting on the knoll, calm and apparently unconcerned, his fine features at rest, his blue eyes lazily regarding the forest.  The blue of Paul’s eyes was different from the blue of the eyes of Alvarez.  The blue of his was deep, warm, and sympathetic.

“Is it likely that Cotter is alone?” Alvarez asked of Wyatt.

“Not at all,” replied the renegade.  “He has friends, and I warn you that they are able and dangerous.  We must be on our watch against them.”

“What friends?” asked the Spaniard incredulously.

“There is a group.  They are five.  Where one of them is, the other four are not likely to be far away.  There is Cotter’s comrade, Henry Ware, a little older, and larger and stronger, wonderful in the woods!  He surpasses the Indians themselves in cunning and craft.  Then comes Sol Hyde, whom they call the shiftless one, but swift and cunning, and much to be dreaded.  Look out for him when he is pretending to be most harmless.  And then Tom Ross, who has been, a hunter and guide all his life, and the one they call Long Jim, the swiftest runner in the wilderness.  Oh, I know them all!”

“Perhaps you have had cause to know them well,” said the Spaniard in a sardonic tone—­he was a keen reader of character, and he understood Braxton Wyatt.

But Braxton Wyatt ignored the taunt in his anxiety.

“They must not be taken too lightly,” he said.  “They are somewhere in these woods, and, Captain, I warn you once more against them.”

The Spaniard smiled in his superior way, and, turning to his men, began to give directions for the camp that night.  Sunset was not far away, and they would remain in the glade.  His was too strong a force to fear attack in that isolated region, but Alvarez posted sentinels, and ordered the others to sleep, when the time came, in a wide ring about the fire.  Within the ring he and Paul and Wyatt sat, and the Spaniard, maintaining his light, ironic humor, talked much.  Paul, if addressed directly by Alvarez, always answered, but he persistently ignored the renegade.  Such a being filled him with horror, and once, when Wyatt gave him a look of deadly hate, Paul shot back one of his own, fully a match for it.  But that was all.