“Father won’t go to sleep to-night,” said Chris, with a sigh of satisfaction caused by the idea. “He’ll be awake and listening for my pony’s steps, and—Oh, how far must it be?
“A good many yards less than it was a minute ago, and it’s getting a shorter distance with every step my mustang takes.”
And onward they went, cheerfully enough, through the black darkness at the bottom of the gulch, the pony never failing, never setting hoof in hole nor stumbling over stone or bush. It stopped for a moment now and then to turn aside or to make sure of some difficulty which needed an outstretched neck, a touch with the muzzle, or a sigh; but otherwise it travelled on slowly but surely through the earlier part of the night, while Chris thought till he could think no longer, and began to ride with his shoulders up, his chin in his chest, and a tendency to bow right down upon his mount’s neck. But he never did that once, only clung with a dreamy feeling of safety, with his knees against the saddle-flaps and his feet fast in the stirrups.
“I must not go to sleep,” he muttered once; but he did all the same, instinctively tightening his hold by means of his abnormally-strained muscles the while.
Chapter Thirty Nine.
Among the Hornets.
It had been a day of severe exertion mentally and bodily, during which the boy’s nature had done its best; but the time came at last when it could do no more, and he rode on at that steady walk, sleeping profoundly, so deeply that he did not know when the mustang suddenly stopped short as if in doubt, and stood with ears pointed forward sniffing at the stones beneath its hoofs, wrested them to the right and again to the left, as if there was some taint in the air. Then the doubt increased, and it bore to the right, stopped, bore to the left again, sniffed more loudly, lowered its head and sniffed again, uttered a low sigh, and resumed its steady walk, on and on, for how long Chris never knew, but hours had passed and he was back again in the square hole which Griggs termed a trap, listening to what he said about the stones which covered the bottom while he made the soft glow of the lanthorn play before his eyes.
Then all at once the dream gave place to the real, and Chris was half-conscious.