With an oath, a sullen look, and a brow black as disappointment could make it, Calhoun turned away from the edge of the chalk prairie, where he had lost the traces of the Headless Horseman.
“No use following further! No knowing where he’s gone now! No hope of finding him except by a fluke! If I go back to the creek I might see him again; but unless I get within range, it’ll end as it’s done before. The mustang stallion won’t let me come near him—as if the brute knows what I’m wanting!
“He’s even cunninger than the wild sort—trained to it, I suppose, by the mustanger himself. One fair shot—if I could only get that, I’d settle his courses.
“There appears no chance of stealing upon him; and as to riding him down, it can’t be done with a slow mule like this.
“The sorrel’s not much better as to speed, though he beats this brute in bottom. I’ll try him to-morrow, with the new shoe.
“If I could only get hold of something that’s fast enough to overtake the mustang! I’d put down handsomely for a horse that could do it.
“There must be one of the sort in the settlement. I’ll see when I get back. If there be, a couple of hundred, ay or three, won’t hinder me from having him.”
After he had made these mutterings Calhoun rode away from the chalk prairie, his dark countenance strangely contrasting with its snowy sheen. He went at a rapid rate; not sparing his horse, already jaded with a protracted journey—as could be told by his sweating coat, and the clots of half-coagulated blood, where the spur had been freely plied upon his flanks. Fresh drops soon appeared as he cantered somewhat heavily on—his head set for the hacienda of Casa del Corvo.
In less than an hour after, his rider was guiding him among the mezquites that skirted the plantation.
It was a path known to Calhoun. He had ridden over it before, though not upon the same horse. On crossing the bed of an arroyo—dry from a long continuance of drought—he was startled at beholding in the mud the tracks of another horse. One of them showed a broken shoe, an old hoof-print, nearly eight days old. He made no examination to ascertain the time. He knew it to an hour.