The retreating horseman has no such comparison in his thoughts, nor any time to contemplate Nature. The troubled expression in his eyes, tells he is in no mood for it. His glance is not given to the grass, nor the brilliant “lightning bugs,” but to a dark belt discernible beyond, apparently a tract of timber, similar to that he has just traversed. More carefully scrutinised, it is seen to be rocks, not trees; in short a continuous line of cliff, forming the boundary of the bottom-land.
He viewing it, well knows what it is, and intends proceeding on to it. He only stays to take bearings for a particular place, at which he evidently aims. His muttered words specify the point.
“The gulch must be to the right. I’ve gone up-river all the while. Confound the crooked luck! It may throw me behind them going back; and how am I to find my way over the big plain! If I get strayed there—Ha! I see the pass now; yon sharp shoulder of rock—its there.”
Once more setting his horse in motion, he makes for the point thus identified. Not now in zig-zags, or slowly—as when working his way through the timber—but in a straight tail-on-end gallop, fast as the animal can go.
And now under the bright moonbeams it may be time to take a closer survey of the hastening horseman. In garb he is Indian, from the mocassins on his feet to the fillet of stained feathers surmounting his head. But the colour of his skin contradicts the idea of his being an aboriginal. His face shows white, but with some smut upon it, like that of a chimney-sweep negligently cleansed. And his features are Caucasian, not ill-favoured, except in their sinister expression; for they are the features of Richard Darke.
Knowing it is he, it will be equally understood that the San Saba is the stream whose sough is so dissonant in his ears, as also, why he is so anxious to put a wide space between himself and its waters. On its bank he has heard a name, and caught sight of him bearing it—the man of all others he has most fear. The backwoodsman who tracked him in the forests of Mississippi, now trailing him upon the prairies of Texas, Simeon Woodley ever pursuing him! If in terror he has been retreating through the trees, not less does he glide over the open ground. Though going in a gallop, every now and then, as before, he keeps slewing round in the saddle and gazing back with apprehensiveness, in fear he may see forms issuing from the timber’s edge, and coming on after.
None appear, however; and, at length, arriving by the bluffs base, he draws up under its shadow, darker now, for clouds are beginning to dapple the sky, making the moon’s light intermittent. Again, he appears uncertain about the direction he should take; and seated in his saddle, looks inquiringly along the façade of the cliff, scrutinising its outline.
Not long before his scrutiny is rewarded. A dark disc of triangular shape, the apex inverted, proclaims a break in the escarpment. It is the embouchure of a ravine, in short the pass he has been searching for, the same already known to the reader. Straight towards it he rides, with the confidence of one who has climbed it before. In like manner he enters between its grim jaws, and spurs his horse up the slope under the shadow of rocks overhanging right and left. He is some twenty minutes in reaching its summit, on the edge of the upland plain. There he emerges into moonlight; for Luna has again looked out.
Seated in his saddle he takes a survey of the bottom-land below. Afar off, he can distinguish the dark belt of timber, fringing the river on both sides, with here and there a reach of water between, glistening in the moon’s soft light like molten silver. His eyes rest not on this, but stray over the open meadow, land in quest of something there.
There is nothing to fix his glance, and he now feels safe, for the first time since starting on that prolonged retreat.