II.
An hour or two later Jack Bishop was lying on the open prairie, where he had thrown himself in a sort of dull despair. His loaded gun lay beside him; his empty wallet hung from his shoulder; his face looked pinched and wan in the vapory moonlight.
"I crossed Jim-Ned," he was saying to himself, mechanically, for the thousandth time; "I crossed the creek and came into The Rough. I left home Tuesday at sun-up.... That puppy ain't worth shucks; I wish I had brought old Josh!... I killed three jack-rabbits in Buck-Snort Gully. By the big cottonwood—what did I do by the big cottonwood? Oh, I ate my corn pone. Gee! how hungry I am!... Then I followed a deer and got into the prairie. Why, I know this prairie 'most as well as I know Jim-Ned! Yonder's Rattlesnake Gap, and yonder's The Rough.... And before I knew it, it was plumb dark.... I went back into The Rough, and tramped and tramped; and the first thing I knew I was out on the prairie again.... I've been doing the same thing ever since, over and over.... I haven't seen a soul.... If I could just glimpse the sun! But seems like the sun never will shine again.... I reckon I'm lost.... Yonder's Rattlesnake Gap, and yonder's The Rough—"
He got up and staggered a few steps, then sank down again. He was a manly lad, and he had borne with hopeful courage the hunger, cold, and loneliness of the long days and nights. But he was exhausted with fatigue, and weakened by want of food; and finally, overcome by a sense of terror and desolation, he covered his face with his hands and groaned aloud.
The painful throbbing in his ears sounded suddenly like the rhythm of advancing footsteps. Something cold and moist touched his cheek; a warm breath mingled with his own.
"Why, Lady!" he cried, springing to his feet. Weariness and hunger and cold had vanished in a trice. Laughing and crying by turns, he clasped his arms about the neck of the little mustang which he had fed and petted as a colt—the wilful Outlaw who had disappeared into The Rough two years before.
Fearful lest the mare should desert him again, he held her long mane with one hand, while with the other he groped, stooping, for his rifle. But the Outlaw apparently did not dream of flight. She stood quite still until the gun was secured and he had climbed with some difficulty upon her back.
"Now, Lady," he shouted, "take me to Jim-Ned! Carry me home!"
Lady threw up her head, neighed, and moved obediently forward. She went at a swift walk, breaking at intervals into the long, swinging, restful mustang lope.
"But—you are going in the wrong direction," remonstrated her rider, at the end of a few moments. He tugged at her mane, and endeavored to change her course. "You are carrying me through the Gap. Jim-Ned is on this side. Back, Lady—back!"
The mare shook herself impatiently, and pushed on between the pyramidal hills which loomed up on either side of the Gap, emerging into the open prairie beyond just as the moon, scattering the clouds at last, filled earth and sky with a flood of golden light.
"Well," said Jack, with a shiver of disappointment, "you'll take me somewhere, I reckon, Lady. I can't be any more lost than I've been for the last three days!"
After a while, however, things began to assume a strangely familiar look. "I've never been west of the Gap before," he muttered, "but—yonder looks like Comanche Mound. And, sure as shootin', here's Matchett's Pond! Ah!" he added, after profound reflection, "I am east of the Gap now. I must have been all this time, somehow, on the other side."
His conjecture was correct. Stumbling unwittingly through the narrow Gap in the darkness of the first night, and deceived by the prairie and woodland beyond, he had there continued the incessant and bewildered round into which he had fallen when he had first lost his bearings.
"It's all clear as daylight now," he cried, joyously. "You've got a heap more sense than I have, Lady! Couldn't fool you with roughs and prairies! And now I think I will stretch my legs a little, and rest you, my beauty."
He slid to the ground and limped along beside his four-footed friend, leaning against her, and chattering boyishly as he went.
"Tain't more'n ten miles to Bishop's store now. And mother'll be on the porch, late as it is, looking out for me. Poor mother, I know she's been fretting! And she'll have the coffee-pot on the coals. And father'll be pretending to scold. But, shucks! he won't mean a word of it. Seems like"—a lump arose in the boy's throat—"seems like I never understood father before, nor loved mother half enough!... Where have you been all this time, anyhow, Lady? Why, what a scratch you've got on your side! Run against a mesquit thorn, eh? It's all bloody. I'll doctor it the minute we get home. Hello!—"
One of his legs seemed all at once to have grown shorter than the other, a loud report rang in his ears, a thrill of intense agony racked his whole body, and he dropped fainting to the ground. He came to himself a moment later to find the blood pouring from a wound in his left shoulder, and when he attempted to rise and draw his leg from the deep rabbit-hole into which he had stumbled a sharp pain warned him that both knee and ankle were sprained or broken. He ceased his efforts and fell back, staring helplessly up at the sky.
The mustang, who had darted away at the discharge of the rifle, had returned, and was standing beside him.
"Don't go, Lady," he implored, catching at her mane. "I've shot myself, I reckon. I can't move my leg. Don't, don't leave me, Lady."
The mare thrust her nose reassuringly against his face.
The blood, which he tried vainly to stanch with his free hand, oozed from the gun-shot wound, and formed a red puddle about his head. He felt himself growing dizzy and nauseated.
It was now about an hour past midnight, and the vast moonlighted prairie was hushed and still. Suddenly a curious sound troubled the silence—a trampling, tearing noise, accompanied by a hoarse confused roar. Jack lifted his head a little and looked.
His heart stood still.
A small herd of cattle roving about the prairie, moved by the curiosity inherent in animals, had drawn near, and excited by the smell of blood, were pawing the earth, bellowing with rage, and circling ever closer and closer about the helpless lad. He could see their wide horns glistening in the moonlight. "Mother! Father!" he breathed; and dropping his head back upon the cold turf, he closed his eyes in instant expectation of death.
But he opened them again. For the Outlaw had whirled abruptly from her post beside him, and charged, with a snort, first into one section and then into another of the infuriated circle. Surprised and daunted, the cattle retreated a short distance, stopped, and stood still, uncertain and dumb.
Hardly, however, had the boy drawn a breath of thankfulness and relief, when there was another mad rush upon him; and again the gallant little mustang, plunging and snorting, held his assailants at bay.
Over and over this assault and repulse were repeated. The half-unconscious lad turned his terrified eyes from side to side, groaning with pain, and lifting his voice brokenly in encouragement of his protector.
But she too was beginning to be spent and exhausted. He stroked her trembling foreleg with his hand as she hovered over him in a moment of respite. "Poor Lady!" he whispered, faintly: "it's mighty nigh over with both of us, I think. You'd better save yourself now, Lady. You can't do anything more for me. Don't cry, Lady. Why, Lady, your eyes are just like mother's!"
And with a sob he lapsed into utter oblivion.