CHAPTER XV.
NINIAN’S GREETING
Suddenly, out of the moonlit distance before them, appeared a strange vision. A horse and his rider, as spotlessly white and gleaming as the snow on the distant mountaintops, moving toward them as swift as the wind and in supernatural silence. The eyes of the steed and its master glowed with a wicked light that startled both the old frontiersman and the modern scribe, and set Prince and Nimrod into paroxysms of terror.
Rearing, plunging and backing, Ninian’s mount had him soon on the ground; and though Ephraim stuck to his saddle like a burr; he could not hold his horse and get at his revolver in that one instant of the appearance and disappearance of this strange “specter.” It was coming––it was upon them––it was gone; and the blast of cold air with which it passed them set the horses shivering in an ague of fear, and tied the men’s tongues.
It seemed an age that they halted there in the open solitude, silently stroking and soothing their frightened beasts, before either could speak. Then “Forty-niner” found his voice and burst forth, absurdly:
“Drat––that––pocket!”
Ninian laughed; nervously, almost hysterically at first; then with honest merriment, exclaiming:
“Oh, what a chance was lost there, comrade!”