I hesitated not to follow. I was by this time too much excited to think of consequences. Moro’s spirit was, like my own, roused to a pitch closely bordering upon the reckless; and on we went through the forest aisle—that appeared to grow gloomier the farther we penetrated under its shadows.
It was a forest of silk-cotton trees—as I could tell by the flossy down that lay scattered along the ground; but while noting this, I saw something else of far greater significance—something, in fact, that seemed to whisper to me, “You are riding fast, but you may be riding too far.”
The thing that suggested this thought was an observation I made at the moment. Though going at full gallop along what appeared to be a natural avenue between the trees, I could not help perceiving that the ground under my horse’s feet was thickly imprinted with tracks. They were the hoof-prints of horses that, not long before, must have passed over it, going in the same direction as myself I might have taken them for a wild herd—the cavallada belonging to some grazing hacienda—of which there were more than one among the half-prairie chapparals that surrounded me; but this conjecture was nipped in the bud, on my perceiving among the tracks more than one set made by horses, that had been handled by the herradero.
I knew that shod horses were rarely or never found in the grazing cavallada; and therefore the large troop that had preceded me through the forest opening, must have had saddles upon their backs, and men bestriding them.
I had gone a good way into the timber before arriving at this conclusion.
I need not say that it affected my further advance. The horsemen who had trodden the track before me must be enemies; they could not be friends. I was now full three miles from the main road—leading from Vera Cruz to Jalapa—and I knew that no troop of our cavalry had left it.
Besides, the shod-tracks I saw were those of mustangs, or Mexican horses—so much smaller in their circumference than those of the American horse, that I could note the difference, even in the glance allowed by the rapidity of my onward gallop.
Mexican cavalry must have passed over the ground, perhaps in retreat from the field of Cerro Gordo; but even so, they might not have proceeded far, since they could have but little fear of our following them in that crosscountry direction.
I was beginning to repent of my recklessness. Already my bridle-rein was, by a half-mechanical effort on my part, perceptibly becoming tighter along the neck of my steed, when the chase that had lured me so far, presented an aspect to seduce me still further.
I had been observing for some time that the mustang, although without a bridle in its mouth, carried one upon the pommel of its saddle. The reins were hanging in a loose coil over the “horn.”