Aaron in the Wildwoods

by Joel Chandler Harris

THE PHANTOM HORSEMAN

Each time he looked back his alarm rose higher, for the Thing was closer whenever he looked. At last his alarm grew to such proportions that he ceased to look back, but addressed himself entirely to the work of urging his horse to higher speed. Presently he heard quick, fierce snorts on his right, and his eye caught sight of the Thing. Its course was parallel with his own, and it was not more than twenty yards away.

He saw enough for his alarm to rise to the height of terror. He saw something that had the head and feet of a black horse, but the body was wanting. No! There was a body, and a rider, but the rider wore a long, pale gray robe, and he was headless! If this was the Black Demon that the young man had seen in this pasture on a former occasion, he was now more terrible than ever, for he was guided by a headless rider!

The young man would have checked his horse, but the effort was in vain. The horse had eyes. He also had seen the Thing, and had swerved away from it, but he was too frightened to pay any attention to bit or rein. The Black Thing was going faster than the frightened horse, and it soon drew away, the pale gray robe of the rider fluttering about like a fierce signal of warning. The young man's horse was soon under control, and in a few minutes he came up with his companions. He found them huddled together like so many sheep, this manœuvre having been instinctively made by the horses. The dogs, too, were acting queerly.

The men appeared to be somewhat surprised to see their companion come galloping up to them. After riding away from the young man who had taken it upon himself to leave the double gates open, the huntsmen had concluded to wait for him when they came to the bars that opened on the public road. But the gallop of their horses had subsided into a walk when they were still some distance from that point. They were conversing about the merits of their favorite dogs when suddenly they heard from behind them the sound of a galloping horse. They saw, as the young man had seen, a dark, moving mass gradually assume the shape of a black horse, with a headless rider wearing a long, pale gray robe. The apparition was somewhat farther from them when it passed than it had been from their companion, whom, in a spirit of mischief, they had deserted; but the Black Thing threatened to come closer, for when it had gone beyond them it changed its course, described a half circle, and vanished from sight on the side of the pasture opposite to that on which it had first appeared.

"What do you think now?" said George Gossett, speaking in a low tone to the gentleman who had been inclined to grow merry when the former experience of the patrollers was mentioned.

"What do I think? Why, I think it's right queer if the chap we left at the double gates isn't trying to get even with us by riding around like a wild Indian and waving his saddle blanket," replied the doubting gentleman.

"Why, man, he's riding a gray horse!" one of the others explained.

This put another face on the matter, and the gentleman made no further remark. In fact, before anything else could be said, the young man in question came galloping up.