Cland, a kind of hawk.
CHAPTER XII.
ATTACK BY PAMPA INDIANS.
So lonesome a ride in the darkness of night, through a country wild and bleak, with danger lurking perhaps on either side of me, might easily have daunted a bolder heart than mine.
Something of the unspeakable feeling of dread I had experienced in the fonda while surrounded by those awful corpses came back to me now. I tried to banish it, but failed. My nervousness became extreme, and appeared to increase rather than diminish as I left the camp farther and farther behind me. It was almost a superstitious fear that had gotten possession of my soul. It was fear of the unseen; and even at this distance of time I can only say I would willingly face death in open day a hundred times over rather than endure for an hour the terrors I suffered that night. Every bush I saw I took for a figure lurking by the roadside, while solitary trees I had to pass assumed the form and shape and even movement of an enemy on horseback riding silently down to meet me. Again and again I clutched my revolver, and even now I cannot tell what power prevented me from firing at my phantom foes. Over and over again I reined up to listen, and at such times the wind whispering through the tall grass sounded to me like human voices, while the cry of birds that now and then rose startlingly close to me, made my heart beat with a violence that in itself was painful. 126
Sometimes I closed my eyes, and gave the horse his head, trying to carry my thoughts back to the lights of the camp, or forward to the fort which I hoped soon to reach.