A HAVEN WORSE THAN THE STORM.
What a difference between this rough country, where the earth was full of pits as a prairie dogs' village, and that old European soil teeming with hotels and inns, where the wealthy traveller could count upon a smiling welcome.
Mr. Gladsden's surprise was tempered with awe. All his ideas were perturbed. His notions of the true and false were upset. His education turned against him, and the instinct of self-preservation made him greet with joy all that he had acquired now of utility in that adventurous passage in his life which he had begun to deplore, and which he took the utmost care his growing sons should never know in detail.
He congratulated himself on having been prompted not to neglect physical experience in favour of the moral, and to fill his mind with practical learning. Intelligence was an important factor, but it had to be backed up by strength and skill to be a conqueror in the desert.
If ever he had felt the European aristocrat's conceit over the Western Americans, he withdrew any injurious depreciation, for he saw clearly that this New World belonged to the clear head and strong arm, and that there was no more desirable comrade than this embodiment beside him of the Great Republic, who had supplemented his inborn powers with the savage's sharpness, strategy, and address.
In other days, he had lightly confronted similar perils from sheer ignorance of their extent; but now, drawn back into the terrible whirlpool from the metropolitan centre of refinement, he felt his heart squeezed by a sudden weight; he was no longer sure of himself as danger, hydra-headed, appeared under new, frightful and multiplied forms.
It was in vain that he sought to recover the plenitude of his judgment. Nothing but the extreme stubbornness which was his racial characteristic, enabled him to master the strange emotions which he experienced, but, if he had lacked for daring and impulse of pride not to show the white feather before a man who he esteemed near enough of his kin to constitute a judge, this determined him to impress favourably at any cost.
While he was fortifying his will, Oliver had completed the preparations for a flight, taking it for granted that his obligation was not discharged till, this time, the English gentleman owned he was perfectly safe.
They mounted, and gradually increasing the pace, went on for upwards of three hours without exchanging one syllable or tightening the rein.
They kept the source stream of the Yaqui on the north, racing through woodland where the guide eluded the branches with miraculous dexterity, and selected "lanes" through which his companion could ride, with lowered head and knees pressed in, without too much risk of an accident like Absalom's.