The Spaniard regarded him with a penetrating look, but the chilly blue eyes expressed nothing.  Yet Francisco Alvarez thought that a bold woodsman like Braxton Wyatt would not show so much fear after a harmless passage with any kind of a snake.

“Do you think the five, the party that you said were so much to be dreaded, are still following us?” he asked presently.

The pallor showed again for a moment through the tan in Braxton Wyatt’s face, but he answered again as carelessly as he could: 

“It may be.  I hate them, but I do not deny that they are bold and resourceful.  They have a good boat, and they may follow; but what harm could they do?”

“As I told you, they might go before Bernardo Galvez, our Governor General at New Orleans, and spoil the pretty plan that you and I have formed.  Galvez is—­as he calls himself—­a Liberal.  He would help these rebels and fight England.  How can a Spaniard lend himself to the cause of Republican rebels and injure monarchy?  Cannot he foresee, cannot he look ahead a little and tell what rebel success means?  It would in the end be as great a blow to Spain as to England.  If Kaintock is permitted to grow she will threaten Louisiana.  These men in their buckskins are daring and dangerous and we must attend to them!”

The Spaniard clenched his hands in anger, and the blue light of his eyes was singularly cruel.

“Galvez is a fool,” he continued.  “He is not allowing the English to trade at New Orleans, but he is giving the American rebels full chance.  He his allowed one, Pollock, Oliver Pollock, to establish a base there.  This Pollock has formed a company of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston merchants, and they are sending arms and ammunition in fleets of canoes up the Mississippi and then up the Ohio to Fort Pitt, where they are unloaded and then taken eastward by land for the use of the rebels.  A fleet of these canoes is to start about the time we arrive in New Orleans.”

“We might meet it,” suggested Braxton Wyatt, “and say that it attacked us.”

The Spaniard smiled.

“The idea is not bad,” he said, “and it could be done.  We could sink their whole fleet of canoes with the pretty little cannon that we carry, and we could prove that they began the attack.  But I do not choose to run the risk of compromising myself just yet.  There is a more glorious enterprise afoot.  Hark you, Senor Wyatt.”

Braxton Wyatt leaned forward and listened attentively.  Francisco Alvarez had drank of wine that evening, and his blood was warm.  He, too, dreamed a great dream.

“You are a man of discretion and you have helped me.  I speak to you as one devoted to my cause.  If you should but breathe what I say to another I would first swear that it was a lie, and then deliver you to these five gentlemen, former friends of yours, who would tear you in pieces.”

Braxton Wyatt shivered again, and the Spaniard, seeing the shiver, laughed and was convinced.