"O God!"
Charles Clancy thus calls upon his Maker. Hitherto sustained by
indignation, now that the tormentor has left him, the horror of his
situation, striking into his soul in all its dread reality, wrings from
him the prayerful apostrophe.
A groan follows, as his glance goes searching over the plain. For there
is nothing to gladden it. His view commands the half of a circle--a
great circle such as surrounds you upon the sea; though not as seen from
the deck of a ship, but by one lying along the thwarts of a boat, or
afloat upon a raft.
The robbers have ridden out of sight, and he knows they will not return.
They have left him to die a lingering death, almost as if entombed
alive. Perhaps better he were enclosed in a coffin; for then his
sufferings would sooner end.
He has not the slightest hope of being succoured. There is no
likelihood of human creature coming that way. It is a sterile waste,
without game to tempt the hunter, and though a trail runs across it,
Borlasse, with fiendish forethought, has placed him so far from this,
that no one travelling along it could possibly see him. He can just
descry the lone cottonwood afar off, outlined against the horizon like a
ship at sea. It is the only tree in sight; elsewhere not even a bush to
break the drear monotony of the desert.
He thinks of Simeon Woodley, Ned Heywood, and those who may pursue the
plunderers of the settlement. But with hopes too faint to be worth
entertaining. For he has been witness to the precautions taken by the
robbers to blind their trail, and knows that the most skilled tracker
cannot discover it. Chance alone could guide the pursuit in that
direction, if pursuit there is to be. But even this is doubtful. For
Colonel Armstrong having recovered his daughters, and only some silver
stolen, the settlers may be loath to take after the thieves, or postpone
following them to some future time. Clancy has no knowledge of the
sanguinary drama that has been enacted at the Mission, else he would not
reason thus. Ignorant of it, he can only be sure, that Sime Woodley and
Ned Heywood will come in quest of, but without much likelihood of their
finding them. No doubt they will search for days, weeks, months, if
need be; and in time, but too late, discover--what? His head--
"Ha!"
His painful reflections are interrupted by that which but intensifies
their painfulness: a shadow he sees flitting across the plain.
His eyes do not follow it, but, directed upward, go in search of the
thing which is causing it. "A vulture!"
The foul bird is soaring aloft, its black body and broad expanded wings
outlined against the azure sky. For this is again clear, the clouds and
threatening storm having drifted off without bursting. And now, while
with woe in his look he watches the swooping bird, well knowing the
sinister significance of its flight, he sees another, and another, and
yet another, till the firmament seems filled with them.