Horror! he was facing, on this moonlight night, on this bare, lonely plain, the ghost of the Trailer!
“You are late on the plain to-night.”
They were almost the very words he had spoken to the guide. With a wild cry, and moved by his great terror, he saw the figure stalk toward the black horse, which walked to meet him.
He stopped in the entrance and stared back, then again shrieking, he sprung in and tightly closed the trap; he had seen the mustang, seized with fear, scour away over the plain, and coming toward the hillock on the stalking black horse was the terrible, strange form—the Trailer’s spirit!
Still shined the moon quietly down. There is dire trouble in the Land of Silence to-night.
CHAPTER XI.
A REFUGE IN TIME.
Away rode the Apaches galloping south-east, leading the captured horses behind them. In the sudden surprise and retreat they had forgotten to retain those articles which they had fixed their eyes on, only a few diminutive and easily-carried articles being clung to. Their most precious prize had been abandoned—the caddy of “black Navy”—far more precious in their estimation than gold or ornaments. It had been pounded, hammered, dashed against wagon hubs, but in vain; and so, though reluctantly, they rode away minus two braves, with two more fatally wounded, with a paltry prize of twelve aged, heavy horses, whose best run was a mere rapid canter, and who were incumbered with heavy, impeding harness.
Not knowing the nature or number of their foes, they were riding away toward a part of the plain some twenty miles distant, which was traversed by numerous and deep arroyos (small chasms or deep ravines) which in their great number and devious windings afforded excellent shelter.
Looking back, though they could not see more than several miles in the hazy moonlight, they were certain that they were pursued, but by whom or how many they could not determine.