Chapter 20 - The Hunt of the Wild Horse by Mayne Reid
Lost upon the prairie
I slept sweetly and soundly. I had no dreams, or only such as were light, and forgotten with the return of consciousness.
It was late when I awoke. A bright sun was mounting into the blue and cloudless sky. This orb was already many degrees above the horizon.
Hunger was the father of my first thought. I had eaten nothing since an early hour of the preceding day, and then only the light desayuna of sweet-cake and chocolate. To one not accustomed to long fasting, a single day without food will give some idea of the pain of hunger; that pain will increase upon a second day, and by the third will have reached its maximum. Upon the fourth and fifth, the body grows weaker, and the brain becomes deranged; the nerve, however, is less acute, and though the suffering is still intense, hunger is never harder to endure than upon the second or third days.
Of course, these remarks apply only to those not habituated to long fasts. I have known men who could endure hunger for six days, and feel less pain than others under a fast of twenty-four hours. Indians or prairie-hunters were those men, and fortunately for them that they are endowed with such powers of endurance, often driven as they are into circumstances of the most dire necessity. Truly, “the Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb!”
As I have said, my first thought was of something to eat.
I rose to my feet, and with my eye swept the prairie in every direction: no object living or dead, greeted my sight; beast or bird there was none; my horse alone met my glance, quietly browsing on his trail-rope.
I could not help envying him, as I scanned his well-filled sides. I thought of the bounty of the Creator in thus providing for his less intelligent creatures—giving them the power to live where man would starve. Who does not in this recognise the hand of a Providence?
I walked forward to the edge of the barranca, and looked over. It was a grim abyss, over a hundred feet in depth, and about the same in width. Its sides were less precipitous at this point. The escarpment rocks had fallen in, and formed a sort of shelving bank, by which a man on foot might have descended into its bed, and climbed out on the opposite side; but it was not passable for a horse. Its cliffs were furrowed and uneven; rocks jutted out and hung over; and in the seams grew cactus plants, bramble, and small trees of dwarf cedar (Juniperus prostrata).
I looked into its channel. I had heard the torrent rolling down in the night. I saw traces of the water among the rocks. A large body must have passed, and yet not a cupful could now have been lifted from its bed! What remained was fast filtering into the sand, or rising back to the heavens upon the heated atmosphere.
I had brought with me my rifle, in hopes of espying some living creature; but after walking for a considerable distance along the edge, I abandoned the search. No trace of bird or quadruped could be found, and I turned and went back to the place where I had slept.
To draw the picket-pin of my horse and saddle him, was the work of a few minutes; this done, I began to bethink me of where I was going. Back to the rancheria, of course!
That was the natural reply to such a question; but there was another far less easily answered: How was I to find the way?
My design of the previous night—to follow back my own trail—was no longer practicable. The rain had effaced the tracks! I remembered that I had passed over wide stretches of light dusty soil, where the hoof scarcely impressed itself. I remembered that the rain had been of that character known as “planet showers,” with large heavy drops, that, in such places, must have blotted out every trace of the trail. To follow the “back-track” was no longer possible.
I had not before thought of this difficulty; and now, that it presented itself to my mind, it was accompanied by a new feeling of dread. I felt that I was lost!
As you sit in your easy-chair, you may fancy that this is a mere bagatelle—a little bewilderment that one may easily escape from who has a good horse between his thighs. It is only to strike boldly out, and by riding on in a straight line, you must in time arrive somewhere.
No doubt, that is your idea; but permit me to inform you that the success of such a course depends very much upon circumstances. It would indeed be trusting to blind chance. You might arrive “somewhere,” and that somewhere might be the very point from which you had started!
Do you fancy you can ride ten miles in a direct line over a prairie, without a single object to guide you?
Be undeceived, then; you cannot!
The best mounted men have perished under such circumstances. It may take days to escape out of a fifty-mile prairie, and days bring death. Hunger and thirst soon gain strength and agony—the sooner that you know you have not the wherewith to satisfy the one, nor quench the other. Besides, there is in your very loneliness a feeling of bewilderment, painful to an extreme degree, and from which only the oldest prairie-men are free. Your senses lose half their power, your energy is diminished, and your resolves become weak and vacillating. You feel doubtful at each step, as to whether you be following the right path, and are ready at every moment to turn into another. Believe me, it is a fearful thing to be alone when lost upon the prairies!
I felt this keenly enough. I had been on the great plains before, but it was the first time I had the misfortune to wander astray on them, and I was the more terrified that I already hungered to no common degree.
There was something singular, too, in the circumstances that had brought me into my present situation. The disappearance of the white steed—although accounted for by perfectly natural causes—had left upon my mind a strange impression. That he should have lured me so far, and then eluded me in such a way! I could not help fancying design in it: and fancying so, I could attribute such design only to a higher intelligence—in fact, to some supernatural cause!
I was again on the edge of superstition. My mind began to give way and yield itself to hideous fancies.
I struggled against such thoughts, and succeeded in rousing myself to reflect upon some active measures for my safety.
I saw that it was of no use to remain where I was. I knew that I could make a straight path for a couple of hours at least—the sun was in the sky, and that would guide me—until near the meridian hours. Then I should have to halt, and wait a while; for in that southern latitude, and just at that time of the year, the sun at noon is so near the zenith that a practised astronomer could not tell north from south.
I reflected that before noon I might reach the timber, though that would not insure my safety. Even the naked plain is not more bewildering than the openings of the mezquite groves and the chapparal that border it. Among these you may travel for days without getting twenty miles from your starting-point, and they are often as destitute of the means of life as the desert itself!
Such were my reflections as I had saddled and bridled my horse, and stood scanning the plain in order to make up my mind as to the direction I should take.