Chapter 64 - The Hunt of the Wild Horse by Mayne Reid
A Lilliputian Forest
On resuming the trail, I was cheered by three considerations. The peril of the flood was past—she was not drowned. The wolves were thrown off—the dangerous rapid had deterred them; on the other side their footprints were no longer found. Thirdly, the steed had slackened his pace. After climbing the bank, he had set off in a rapid gait, but not at a gallop.
“He’s been pacin’ hyar!” remarked Garey, as soon as his eyes rested upon the tracks.
“Pacing!”
I knew what was meant by this; I knew that gait peculiar to the prairie horse, fast but smooth as the amble of a palfrey. His rider would scarcely perceive the gentle movement; her torture would be less.
Perhaps, too, no longer frighted by the fierce pursuers, the horse would come to a stop. His wearied limbs would admonish him, and then—
Surely he could not have gone much farther?
We, too, were wearied, one and all; but these pleasing conjectures beguiled us from thinking of our toil, and we advanced more hopefully along the trail.
Alas! it was my fate to be the victim of alternate hopes and fears. My new-sprung joy was short-lived, and fast fleeted away.
We had gone but a few hundred paces from the river, when we encountered an obstacle, that proved not only a serious barrier to our progress, but almost brought our tracking to a termination.
This obstacle was a forest of oaks, not giant oaks, as these famed trees are usually designated, but the very reverse—a forest of dwarf oaks (Quercus nana). Far as the eye could reach extended this singular wood, in which no tree rose above thirty inches in height! Yet was it no thicket—no under-growth of shrubs—but a true forest of oaks, each tree having its separate stem, its boughs, its lobed leaves, and its bunches of brown acorns.
“Shin oak,” cried the trappers, as we entered the verge of this miniature forest.
“Wagh!” exclaimed Rube, in a tone of impatience, “hyur’s bother. ’Ee may all get out o’ yur saddles an rest yur critturs: we’ll hev to crawl hyur.”
And so it resulted. For long weary hours we followed the trail, going not faster than we could have crawled upon our hands and knees. The tracks of the steed were plain enough, and in daylight could have been easily followed; but the little oaks grew close and regular as if planted by the hand of man; and through their thick foliage the moonlight scarcely penetrated. Their boughs almost touched each other, so that the whole surface lay in dark shadow, rendering it almost impossible to make out the hoof-prints. Here and there, a broken branch or a bunch of tossed leaves—their under-sides shining glaucous in the moonlight—enabled us to advance at a quicker rate; but as the horse had passed gently over the ground, these “signs” were few and far between.
For long fretful hours we toiled through the “shin-oak” forest, our heads far overtopping its tallest trees! We might have fancied that we were threading our way through some extended nursery. The trail led directly across its central part; and ere we had reached its furthest verge, the moon’s rays were mingling with the purple light of morning.
Soon after the “forest opened;” the little dwarfs grew further apart—here scattered thinly over the ground, there disposed in clumps or miniature grove?—until at length the sward of the prairie predominated.
The trouble of the trackers was at an end. The welcome light of the sun was thrown upon the trail, so that they could lift it as fast as we could ride; and, no longer hindered by brake or bush, we advanced at a rapid rate across the prairie.
Over this ground the steed had also passed rapidly. He had continued to pace for some distance, after emerging from the shin-oak forest; but all at once, as we could tell by his tracks, he had bounded off again, and resumed his headlong gallop.
What had started him afresh? We were at a loss to imagine; even the prairie-men were puzzled!
Had wolves again attacked him, or some other enemy? No; nor one nor other. It was a green prairie over which he had gone, a smooth sward of mezquite-grass; but there were spots where the growth was thin—patches nearly bare—and these were softened by the rain. Even the light paw of a wolf would have impressed itself in such places, sufficiently to be detected by the lynx-eyed men of the plains. The horse had passed since the rain had ceased falling. No wolf, or other animal, had been after him.
Perhaps he had taken a start of himself, freshly affrighted at the novel mode in which he was ridden—still under excitement from the rough usage he had received, and from which he had not yet cooled down—perhaps the barbed points of the cohetes rankled in his flesh, acting like spurs; perhaps some distant sound had led him to fancy the hooting mob, or the howling wolves, still coming at his heels; perhaps—
An exclamation from the trackers, who were riding in the advance, put an end to these conjectures. Both had pulled up, and were pointing to the ground. No words were spoken—none needed. We all read with our eyes an explanation of the renewed gallop.
Directly in front of us, the sward was cut and scored by numerous tracks. Not four, but four hundred hoof-prints were indented in the turf—all of them fresh as the trail we were following—and amidst these the tracks of the steed, becoming intermingled, were lost to our view.
“A drove of wild horses,” pronounced the guides at a glance.
They were the tracks of unshod hoofs, though that would scarcely have proved them wild. An Indian troop might have ridden past without leaving any other sign; but these horses had not been mounted, as the trappers confidently alleged; and among them were the hoof-marks of foals and half-grown colts, which proved the drove to be a caballada of mustangs.
At the point where we first struck their tracks they had been going in full speed, and the trail of the steed converged until it closed with theirs at an acute angle.
“Ye-es,” drawled Rube, “I see how ’tis. They’ve been skeeart at the awkurd look o’ the hoss, an hev put off. See! thur’s his tracks on the top o’ all o’ theirn: he’s been runnin’ arter ’em. Thur!” continued the tracker, as we advanced—“thur he hez overtuk some o’ ’em. See! thur! the vamints hev scattered right an left! Hyur agin, they’ve galliped thegither, some ahint, an some afore him. Wagh! I guess they know him now, an ain’t any more afeerd o’ him. See thur! he’s in the thick o’ the drove.”
Involuntarily I raised my eyes, fancying from these words that the horses were in sight; but no; the speaker was riding forward, leaning over in his saddle, with looks fixed upon the ground. All that he had spoken he had been reading from the surface of the prairie—from hieroglyphics to me unintelligible, but to him more easily interpreted than a page of the printed book.
I knew that what he was saying was true. The steed had galloped after a drove of wild horses; he had overtaken them; and at the point where we now were, had been passing along in their midst!
Dark thoughts came crowding into my mind at this discovery—another shadow across my heart. I perceived at once a new situation of peril for my betrothed—new, and strange, and awful.
I saw her in the midst of a troop of neighing wild-horses—stallions with fiery eyes and red steaming nostrils—these perhaps angry at the white steed, and jealous of his approach to the manada; in mad rage rushing upon him with open mouth and yellow glistening teeth; rearing around and above him, and striking down with deadly desperate hoof— Oh, it was a horrid apprehension, a fearful fancy!
Yet, fearful as it was, it proved to be the exact shadow of a reality. As the mirage refracts distant objects upon the retina of the eye, so some spiritual mirage must have thrown upon my mind the image of things that were real. Not distant, though then unseen—not distant was the real.
Rapidly I ascended another swell of the prairie, and from its crest beheld almost the counterpart of the terrible scene that my imagination had conjured up!
Was it a dream? was it still fancy that was cheating my eyes? No; there was the wild-horse drove; there the rearing, screaming stallions; there the white steed in their midst—he too rearing erect—there upon his back—
“O God! look down in mercy—save her! save her!”