Chapter 66 - The Hunt of the Wild Horse by Mayne Reid
Lost in a Chapparal
I was chagrined, frantic, and despairing, but not surprised. This time there was no mystery about the disappearance of the steed; the chapparal explained it. Though I no longer saw him, he was yet within hearing. His footfall on the firm ground, the occasional snapping of a dead stick, the whisk of the recoiling branches, all reached my ears as I was remounting.
These sounds guided me, and without staying to follow his tracks, I dashed forward to the edge of the chapparal—at the point nearest to where I heard him moving.
I did not pause to look for an opening, but, heading in the direction whence came the sounds, I spurred forward into the thicket.
Breasting the bushes that reached around, his neck, or bounding over them, my brave horse pressed on; but he had not gone three lengths of himself before I recognised the imprudence of the course I was pursuing: I now saw I should have followed the tracks.
I no longer heard the movements of the steed—neither foot-stroke, nor snapping sticks, nor breaking branches. The noise made by my own horse, amid the crackling acacias, drowned every other sound; and so long as I kept in motion, I moved with uncertainty. It was only when I made stop that I could again hear the chase struggling through the thicket; but now the sounds were faint and far distant—growing still fainter as I listened.
Once more I urged forward my horse, heading him almost at random; but I had not advanced a hundred paces, before the misery of uncertainty again impelled me to halt.
This time I listened and heard nothing—not even the recoil of a bough. The steed had either stopped, and was standing silent, or, what was more probable, had gained so so far in advance of me that his hoof-stroke was out of hearing.
Half-frantic, angered at myself, too much excited for cool reflection, I lanced the sides of my horse, and galloped madly through the thicket.
I rode several hundred yards before drawing bridle, in a sort of desperate hope I might once more bring myself within earshot of the chase.
Again I halted to listen. My recklessness proved of no avail. Not a sound reached my ear: even had there been sounds, I should scarcely have heard them above that that was issuing from the nostrils of my panting horse; but sound there was none. Silent was the chapparal around me—silent as death; not even a bird moved among its branches.
I felt something like self-execration: my imprudence I denounced over and over. But for my rash haste, I might yet have been upon the trail—perhaps within sight of the object of pursuit. Where the steed had gone, surely I could have followed. Now he was gone I knew not whither—lost—his trail lost—all lost!
To recover the trace of him, I made several casts across the thicket. I rode first in one direction, then in another, but all to no purpose. I could find neither hoof-track nor broken branch.
I next bethought me of returning to the open prairie, there retaking the trail, and following it thence. This was clearly the wisest,—in fact, the only course in which there was reason. I should easily recover the trail, at the point where the horse had entered the chapparal, and thence I might follow it without difficulty.
I turned my horse round, and headed him in the direction of the prairie—or rather in what I supposed to be the direction—for this too had become conjecture.
It was not till I had ridden for a half-hour—for more than a mile through glade and bush—not till I had ridden nearly twice as far in the opposite direction—and then to right, and then to left—that I pulled up my broken horse, dropped the rein upon his withers, and sat bent in my saddle under the full conviction that I too was lost.
Lost in the chapparal—that parched and hideous jungle, where every plant that carries a thorn seemed to have place. Around grew acacias, mimosas, gleditschias, robinias, algarobias—all the thorny legumes of the world; above towered the splendid fouquiera with spinous stem; there nourished the “tornillo” (prosopis glandulosa), with its twisted beans; there the “junco” (koeblerinia), whose very leaves are thorns. There saw I spear-pointed yuccas and clawed bromelias (agave and dasylirion); there, too, the universal cactacese (opuntia, mamillaria, cereus, and echinocactus); even the very grass was thorny—for it was a species of the “mezquite-grass,” whose knotted culms are armed with sharp spurs!
Through this horrid thicket I had not passed unscathed; my garments were already torn, my limbs were bleeding.
My limbs—and hers?
Of hers alone was I thinking: those fair-proportioned members—those softly-rounded arms—that smooth, delicate skin—bosom and shoulders bare—the thorn—the scratch—the tear. Oh! it was agony to think!
By action alone might I hope to still my emotions; and once more rousing myself from the lethargy of painful thought, I urged my steed onward through the bushes.