At all events, I interpreted it as a challenge of this kind, and, in the excitement of the moment, I determined to accept it.
I was influenced, also, by the presence of my comrades, who were watching me from below.
Duty should have determined me to ride back to them, and resume our interrupted march; but the chagrin which I should have felt in so easily abandoning a project I had taken up with such a show of determination, outweighed my sense of duty; and, without further delay, I launched myself down the slope in pursuit of the fugitive horse.
As I drew near, the animal started off again; but, instead of taking to the timber—as I expected it would have done—it kept along the edge of the wood, in a south-easterly direction.
This was just what I wanted. I believed that on open ground—in a fair tail-on-end chase—I could overtake either it or any other mustang in Mexico; and my hope was that it might give me a fair chance without taking to cover.
Although I had hunted its wild congeners on the prairies of Texas, it proved the swiftest thing in mustang shape I had ever followed, and I soon began to doubt my capacity to overtake it.
After I had ridden more than a mile along the edge of the forest timber, the creature seemed as far ahead of me as ever! I was fast losing faith in the fleetness of Moro; for I knew that he had been going at top speed all the time, while the mustang appeared to have preserved the distance with which it had started.
“It has heels equal to yours, Moro,” I said mutteringly to my own horse. “It will be a question of bottom between you.”
Was Moro stung by my reproach? He seemed so. Perhaps my thoughts were his? At all events I could feel him perceptibly mending his pace; and perceived, moreover, that he was at last gaining ground upon the fugitive.
There was a natural reason for this, though I did not think of it at the moment. The first mile of the chase had been down hill—so much the worse for Moro. He was a true Arab; his ancestors had been denizens of the great plains of the Sahara—a race of steeds famed for fleetness on the level course. The mustang, on the contrary, was by birth and habits a mountaineer; and either up-hill or down hill would have been the track of his selection.