CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN.

A STRAYING TRAVELLER.

A man on horseback making his way through a wood. Not on road, or trodden path, or trace of any kind. For it is a tract of virgin forest, in which settler's axe has never sounded, rarely traversed by ridden horse; still more rarely by pedestrian.

He, now pa.s.sing through it, rides as fast as the thick standing trunks, and tangle of undergrowth will allow. The darkness also obstructs him; for it is night. Withal he advances rapidly, though cautiously; at intervals glancing back, at longer ones, delaying to listen, with chin upon his shoulder.

His behaviour shows fear; so, too, his face. Here and there the moonbeams shining through breaks in the foliage, reveal upon his features bewilderment, as well as terror. By their light he is guiding his course, though he does not seem sure of it. The only thing appearing certain is, that he fears something behind, and is fleeing from it.

Once he pauses, longer than usual; and, holding his horse in check, sits listening attentively. While thus halted, he hears a noise, which he knows to be the ripple of a river. It seems oddly to affect him, calling forth an exclamation, which shows he is dissatisfied with the sound.

"Am I never to get away from it? I've been over an hour straying about here, and there's the thing still--not a quarter of a mile off, and timber thick as ever. I thought that last shoot would have taken me out of it. I must have turned somewhere. No help for it, but try again."

Making a half-face round, he heads his horse in a direction opposite to that from which comes the sound of the water. He has done so repeatedly, as oft straying back towards the stream. It is evident he has no wish to go any nearer; but a strong desire to get away from it.

This time he is successful. The new direction followed a half-mile further shows him clear sky ahead, and in a few minutes more he is at the forest's outmost edge. Before him stretches an expanse of plain altogether treeless, but clothed with tall gra.s.s, whose culms stirred by the night breeze, and silvered by the moonbeams, sway to and fro, like the soft tremulous wavelets of a tropic sea; myriads of fire-flies prinkling among the spikes, and emitting a gleam, as phosph.o.r.escent _medusae_, make the resemblance complete.

The retreating horseman has no such comparison in his thoughts, nor any time to contemplate Nature. The troubled expression in his eyes, tells he is in no mood for it. His glance is not given to the gra.s.s, nor the brilliant "lightning bugs," but to a dark belt discernible beyond, apparently a tract of timber, similar to that he has just traversed.

More carefully scrutinised, it is seen to be rocks, not trees; in short a continuous line of cliff, forming the boundary of the bottom-land.

He viewing it, well knows what it is, and intends proceeding on to it.

He only stays to take bearings for a particular place, at which he evidently aims. His muttered words specify the point.

"The gulch must be to the right. I've gone up-river all the while.

Confound the crooked luck! It may throw me behind them going back; and how am I to find my way over the big plain! If I get strayed there--Ha!

I see the pa.s.s now; yon sharp shoulder of rock--its there."

Once more setting his horse in motion, he makes for the point thus identified. Not now in zig-zags, or slowly--as when working his way through the timber--but in a straight tail-on-end gallop, fast as the animal can go.

And now under the bright moonbeams it may be time to take a closer survey of the hastening horseman. In garb he is Indian, from the moca.s.sins on his feet to the fillet of stained feathers surmounting his head. But the colour of his skin contradicts the idea of his being an aboriginal. His face shows white, but with some s.m.u.t upon it, like that of a chimney-sweep negligently cleansed. And his features are Caucasian, not ill-favoured, except in their sinister expression; for they are the features of Richard Darke.

Knowing it is he, it will be equally understood that the San Saba is the stream whose sough is so dissonant in his ears, as also, why he is so anxious to put a wide s.p.a.ce between himself and its waters. On its bank he has heard a name, and caught sight of him bearing it--the man of all others he has most fear. The backwoodsman who tracked him in the forests of Mississippi, now trailing him upon the prairies of Texas, Simeon Woodley ever pursuing him! If in terror he has been retreating through the trees, not less does he glide over the open ground. Though going in a gallop, every now and then, as before, he keeps slewing round in the saddle and gazing back with apprehensiveness, in fear he may see forms issuing from the timber's edge, and coming on after.

None appear, however; and, at length, arriving by the bluffs base, he draws up under its shadow, darker now, for clouds are beginning to dapple the sky, making the moon's light intermittent. Again, he appears uncertain about the direction he should take; and seated in his saddle, looks inquiringly along the facade of the cliff, scrutinising its outline.

Not long before his scrutiny is rewarded. A dark disc of triangular shape, the apex inverted, proclaims a break in the escarpment. It is the embouchure of a ravine, in short the pa.s.s he has been searching for, the same already known to the reader. Straight towards it he rides, with the confidence of one who has climbed it before. In like manner he enters between its grim jaws, and spurs his horse up the slope under the shadow of rocks overhanging right and left. He is some twenty minutes in reaching its summit, on the edge of the upland plain. There he emerges into moonlight; for Luna has again looked out.

Seated in his saddle he takes a survey of the bottom-land below. Afar off, he can distinguish the dark belt of timber, fringing the river on both sides, with here and there a reach of water between, glistening in the moon's soft light like molten silver. His eyes rest not on this, but stray over the open meadow, land in quest of something there.

There is nothing to fix his glance, and he now feels safe, for the first time since starting on that prolonged retreat.

Drawing a free breath he says, soliloquising:--

"No good my going farther now. Besides I don't know the trail, not a foot farther. No help for it but stay here till Borla.s.se and the boys come up. They can't be much longer, unless they've had a fight to detain them; which I don't think at all likely, after what the half-blood told us. In any case some of them will be this way. Great G.o.d! To think of Sime Woodley being here! And after me, sure, for the killing of Clancy! Heywood, too, and Harkness along with them! How is that, I wonder? Can they have met my old jailer on the way, and brought him back to help in tracing me? What the devil does it all mean? It looks as if the very Fates were conspiring for my destruction.

"And who the fellow that laid hold of my horse? So like Clancy! I could swear 'twas he, if I wasn't sure of having settled him. If ever gun-bullet gave a man his quietus, mine did him. The breath was out of his body before I left him.

"Sime Woodley's after me, sure! d.a.m.n the ugly brute of a backwoodsman!

He seems to have been created for the special purpose of pursuing me?

"And she in my power, to let her so slackly go again! I may never have another such chance. She'll get safe back to the settlements, there to make mock of me! What a simpleton I've been to let her go alive! I should have driven my knife into her. Why didn't I do it? Ach!"

As he utters the harsh exclamation there is blackness on his brow, and chagrin in his glance; a look, such as Satan may have cast back at Paradise on being expelled from it.

With a.s.sumed resignation, he continues:--

"No good my grieving over it now. Regrets won't get her back. There may be another opportunity yet. If I live there shall be, though it cost me all my life to bring it about."

Another pause spent reflecting what he ought to do next. He has still some fear of being followed by Sime Woodley. Endeavouring to dismiss it, he mutters:--

"'Tisn't at all likely they'd find the way up here. They appeared to be afoot. I saw no horses. They might have them for all that. But they can't tell which way I took through the timber, and anyhow couldn't track me till after daylight. Before then Borla.s.se will certainly be along. Just possible he may come across Woodley and his lot. They'll be sure to make for the Mission, and take the road up t'other side. A good chance of our fellows encountering them, unless that begging fool, Bosley, has let all out. Maybe they killed him on the spot? I didn't hear the end of it, and hope they have."

With this barbarous reflection he discontinues his soliloquy, bethinking himself, how he may best pa.s.s the time till his comrades come on. At first he designs alighting, and lying down: for he has been many hours in the saddle, and feels fatigued. But just as he is about to dismount, it occurs to him the place is not a proper one. Around the summit of the pa.s.s, the plain is without a stick of timber, not even a bush to give shade or concealment, and of this last he now begins to recognise the need. For, all at once, he recalls a conversation with Borla.s.se, in which mention was made of Sime Woodley; the robber telling of his having been in Texas before, and out upon the San Saba--the very place where now seen! Therefore, the backwoodsman will be acquainted with the locality, and may strike for the trail he has himself taken. He remembers Sime's reputation as a tracker; he no longer feels safe. In the confusion of his senses, his fancy exaggerates his fears, and he almost dreads to look back across the bottom-land.

Thus apprehensive, he turns his eyes towards the plain, in search of a better place for his temporary bivouac, or at all events a safer one.

He sees it. To the right, and some two or three hundred yards off is a _motte_ of timber, standing solitary on the otherwise treeless expanse.

It is the grove of black-jacks, where Hawkins and Tucker halted that same afternoon.

"The very place!" says Richard Darke to himself, after scrutinising it.

"There I'll be safe every way; can see without being seen. It commands a view of the pa.s.s, and, if the moon keep clear, I'll be able to tell who comes up, whether friends or foes."

Saying this, he makes for the _motte_.

Reaching it, he dismounts, and, drawing the rein over his horse's head, leads the animal in among the trees.

At a short distance from the grove's edge is a glade. In this he makes stop, and secures the horse, by looping the bridle around a branch.

He has a tin canteen hanging over the horn of his saddle, which he lifts off. It is a large one,--capable of holding a half-gallon. It is three parts full, not of water, but of whisky. The fourth part he has drunk during the day, and earlier hours of the night, to give him courage for the part he had to play. He now drinks to drown his chagrin at having played it so badly. Cursing his crooked luck, as he calls it, he takes a swig of the whisky, and then steps back to the place where he entered among the black-jacks. There taking stand, he awaits the coming of his confederates.

He keeps his eyes upon the summit of the pa.s.s. They cannot come up without his seeing them, much less go on over the plain.

They must arrive soon, else he will not be able to see them. For he has brought the canteen along, and, raising it repeatedly to his lips, his sight is becoming obscured, the equilibrium of his body endangered.

As the vessel grows lighter, so does his head; while his limbs refuse to support the weight of his body, which oscillates from side to side.

At length, with an indistinct perception of inability to sustain himself erect, and a belief he would feel better in a rec.u.mbent att.i.tude, he gropes his way back to the glade, where, staggering about for a while, he at length settles down, dead drunk. In ten seconds he is asleep, in slumber so profound, that a cannon shot--even the voice of Simeon Woodley--would scarce awake him.

CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT.

"BRASFORT."

"Brasfort has caught scent!"

The speech comes from one of two men making their way through a wood, the same across which Richard Darke has just retreated. But they are not retreating as he; on the contrary pursuing, himself the object of their pursuit. For they two men are Charles Clancy, and Jupiter.

They are mounted, Clancy on his horse--a splendid animal--the mulatto astride the mule.