"Look, mother!" exclaimed Molly Wingate--she now rode with her mother on the seat of the family wagon, Jed driving her cart when not on the cow column. "See! There's a caravan!"
Her cry was echoed or anticipated by scores of voices of others who had seen the same thing. They pointed west and south.
Surely there was a caravan--a phantom caravan! Far off, gigantic, looming and lowering again, it paralleled the advance of their own train, which in numbers it seemed to equal. Slowly, steadily, irresistibly, awesomely, it kept pace with them, sending no sign to them, mockingly indifferent to them--mockingly so, indeed; for when the leaders of the Wingate wagons paused the riders of the ghostly train paused also, biding their time with no action to indicate their intent. When the advance was resumed the uncanny pari passu again went on, the rival caravan going forward as fast, no faster than those who regarded it in a fascinated interest that began to become fear. Yonder caravan could bode no good. Without doubt it planned an ambush farther on, and this sinister indifference meant only its certainty of success.
[pg 294]
Or were there, then, other races of men out here in this unknown world of heat and sand? Was this a treasure train of old Spanish cargadores? Did ghosts live and move as men? If not, what caravan was this, moving alone, far from the beaten trail? What purpose had it here?
"Look, mother!"
The girl's voice rose eagerly again, but this time with a laugh in it. And her assurance passed down the line, others laughing in relief at the solution.
"It's ourselves!" said Molly. "It's the Fata Morgana--but how marvelous! Who could believe it?"
Indeed, the mirage had taken that rare and extraordinary form. The mirage of their own caravan, rising, was reflected, mirrored, by some freak of the desert sun and air, upon the fine sand blown in the air at a distance from the train. It was, indeed, themselves they saw, not knowing it, in a vast primordial mirror of the desert gods. Nor did the discovery of the truth lessen the feeling of discomfort, of apprehension. The laughter was at best uneasy until at last a turn in the trail, a shift in the wizardry of the heat waves, broke up the ghostly caravan and sent it, figure by figure, vehicle by vehicle, into the unknown whence it had come.