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.