“By heaven!” exclaimed the startled frontiersman, as his ready rifle was braced against his shoulder, “if it hain’t an Indian. No, it’s a creepin’, snarlin’ wolf. No, ’tis a b’ar. No, it hain’t none of them. It’s—by thunder, I don’t know what it is;” and he swung himself from his horse, and, bending down, closely watched.
That it was something endowed with life he readily perceived, but what it was he could not make out. Wolf nor bear ever made those stealthy motions, or crept thus slowly along. It was very indistinct, and again he raised his rifle.
“If you be a human, speak,” he shouted; “but if a b’ar or a cowardly cayote, then I’m arter your scalp, and no mistake. But no, no; I don’t need it, and such a night is enough to make beast and man brothers. No, no, I’ll not shoot. Go your way, and if—as I live by bread and buffalo meat, it’s gone! I’ve traveled many a long mile in my day, and this bangs all the other doin’s I ever saw. I do think it was a human, or”—and he raised his hand to his head, as if to be certain that his hair would not lift his cap off in terror of the thought, and his voice dropped to a whisper—“or it mought have been a ghost!”
“Yes, it was a speerit,” he whispered, under his breath; “a poor, wanderin’ speerit, that can not rest quietly in the grave. Poor soul—who knows but that it mought come back again;” and, for the first time during the night, his spurs touched his horse’s flank, and with a great leap the generous brute bounded forward.
But he could not shake the fear from his mind, and he who, single-handed, would have dauntlessly rode into the face of death, now looked anxiously around in the quest of something that his better judgment told him could not exist.
With a feeling of vague terror, Waltermyer still urged his horse on. He had but one object in view, that was to reach the topmost cliff, and there, when morning’s dawn transfigured earth, he could command a boundless view. But the frontiersman had not a heart or mind to linger on imaginary danger.
Soon the cool breeze swept downward, and wantoned with his wet hair, and made merry with his draggled garments, and in its freshness his hardihood returned; even the strain of an old hunting-song hung upon his lips and struggled for utterance as he rode along.
Clearly above him, through the sharp-cut walls of the cañon, he soon began to see the stars shine brightly, and, as the golden light came shimmering down through the leaves, his way became clear, and he urged his good steed more rapidly forward. Then came the gray of morning, the hour when the cloudy waves of night are at full ebb, and stand transfixed, as it were, with golden arrows for a moment, before the flood of day comes surging from the eastern ocean. In the weird semi-light he rode blithely on. A foaming rivulet that a few hours before had held no drop of moisture rolled before him. The whole earth was refreshed, and he felt the glorious influence.
“Come, Star!” he lifted his horse with hand and rein, and rode boldly in.
To the very saddle-bow sunk the horse, as he plunged in the stream, and the foam-beads danced among his tawny mane as his feet failed to reach the bottom.