“Well, this is hopeless. I might ride over her and not find her in this fog. But I can’t stay here. It’s choking. Heaven grant my Kitty’s safe under shelter somewhere. My own safety is to keep moving. Good boy, Tempest! Take it easy, but don’t stop.”
After that, there was nothing to do but trust the horse’s instinct to find a path through the mist and to be grateful that the ground was so level.
“It’s a long lane that has no turning. It must be that we’ll strike something different after a while; if not a settler’s house, at least a clump of trees. Any shelter would be better than none, in this creeping moisture. It would be easy to get lost; and what a situation! Oh! if I knew that she was out of it. A messenger to the Indians, eh? My little Kit, my dainty foster-sister!”
The gelding’s nose was to the ground and, as a dog would have done, he picked his way, cautiously, yet surely, straight north where lay, though Gaspar did not know it, a settler’s clearing and comfortable cabin. The rider’s thoughts passed from his present surroundings back to the past and forward to the future; and when there sounded, almost at his feet, a cry of distress he did not hear it in his absorption.
But Tempest did. At the second wail he stopped short, and it was this that roused Gaspar from his reverie.
“Tired, old Tempest, boy? It won’t do to rest here. Take a breath, if you like, and get on again. Keeping at it is salvation.”
“Mamma! I want—my—mamma!”
“Whew! What’s that? Hello!”
The sound was not repeated, and yet Tempest would not advance.