Chapter 66

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.