The impatient pursuer was puzzled. He rode round and round, and along the trail of the wild mares, and back again, without discovering the direction that had been taken by either of the ridden horses.
He was beginning to feel something more than surprise, when the sight of a solitary horseman advancing along the trail interrupted his uncomfortable conjectures.
It was no stranger who was drawing near. The colossal figure, clad in coarse habiliments, bearded to the buttons of his blanket coat, and bestriding the most contemptible looking steed that could have been found within a hundred miles of the spot, was an old acquaintance. Cassius Calhoun knew Zebulon Stump, and Zeb Stump knew Cash Calhoun, long before either had set foot upon the prairies of Texas.
“You hain’t seed nuthin’ o’ the young lady, hev ye, Mister Calhoun?” inquired the hunter, as he rode up, with an unusual impressiveness of manner. “No, ye hain’t,” he continued, as if deducing his inference from the blank looks of the other. “Dog-gone my cats! I wonder what the hell hev becomed o’ her! Kewrious, too; sech a rider as she air, ter let the durned goat o’ a thing run away wi’ her. Wal! thur’s not much danger to be reeprehended. The mowstanger air putty sartin to throw his rope aroun’ the critter, an that ’ll put an eend to its capers. Why hev ye stopped hyur?”
“I’m puzzled about the direction they’ve taken. Their tracks show they’ve been halted here; but I can see the shod hoofs no farther.”
“Whoo! whoo! yur right, Mister Cashus! They hev been halted hyur; an been clost thegither too. They hain’t gone no further on the trail o’ the wild maars. Sartin they hain’t. What then?”
The speaker scanned the surface of the plain with an interrogative glance; as if there, and not from Cassius Calhoun, expecting an answer to his question.
“I cannot see their tracks anywhere,” replied the ex-captain.
“No, kan’t ye? I kin though. Lookee hyur! Don’t ye see them thur bruises on the grass?”
“No.”