Perhaps Horace Townsend had been as badly startled as any of the others, at the first instant; but he possessed some data which the others lacked for discovering the source of the warlike yell.
"Do not be alarmed, ladies!" he said, after an instant. "I think there is only one Indian uttering that horrible sound, and you may depend upon it that he is white and no rebel. Yes—see!—here he comes!"
They had been, as already indicated, descending a quarter of a mile of most difficult and dangerous path, in which every rider experienced more or less of tremor, and over which the horses were picking their careful way as if they realized that human necks were in peril. At the instant when the attention of the company was thus directed backwards, Halstead Rowan had reached the top of the rise, behind, and was just giving vent to a second and supplemental yell which rang through the woods as if a dozen throats had taken part in it, and which must have been heard half way down the Notch.
"Pop-pop-pop-pa-hoo! Hoo-hoo-oo-oo!"
The rider was commencing the descent, too, but not precisely like the rest, picking his way, on a careful half-trot, half-walk; on the contrary his horse had his ears laid back and was going over the broken stones at such a gallop as he might have held on an ordinary highway! The reins seemed to be lying loose on his neck, and—could those horrified people believe their eyes?—so surely as they were threading the tangled woods of Mount Clinton, with thankful hearts for every rood passed over without broken necks, so surely Halstead Rowan, a novel description of Mazeppa unknown even to Frank Drew or Adah Isaacs, sat his horse in what might be called "reverse order," his back towards them and his face to the animal's tail!
"Good heavens!" "The man is mad!" "Oh, do stop the horse!" "It is running away with him!" "He will be killed!"—such were the exclamations that broke from the party as Rowan's equestrianism was recognized—most of them from the female portion of the cavalcade. What would it not have been worth to see sweet Clara Vanderlyn's face at the moment when she first realized who was the reckless rider, and to know whether she cared for his welfare at all and whether anxiety or confidence predominated in her thought!
But the rider did not pause, or seem very much in peril. His horse kept his feet quite as well as any of the others; and Townsend remembering the Comanches and the Arapahoes, was forced to believe that the wild equestrian must have the alleged Indian power of communicating his own will to his horse, and that he could ride almost anywhere and in any manner, in safety.
Rowan drew the reins (which he had in his hands, after all) as he came up with the cavalcade, and said:
"I hope I did not startle any of you ladies with my Indian whoop. Upon my honor I did not mean to do so, if I did; for I hate practical jokes that cause pain, quite as much as any of the other fellows, the—gentlemen. But the woods tempted me, and I have not enjoyed such an opportunity for the use of the lungs, this many a day."
"I believe some of us were a little frightened for a moment, but no harm done," said Horace Townsend. "But let me ask you—is not your riding just a little bit careless?"