I next bethought me of returning to the open prairie, there retaking the trail, and following it thence. This was clearly the wisest,—in fact, the only course in which there was reason. I should easily recover the trail, at the point where the horse had entered the chapparal, and thence I might follow it without difficulty.
I turned my horse round, and headed him in the direction of the prairie—or rather in what I supposed to be the direction—for this too had become conjecture.
It was not till I had ridden for a half-hour—for more than a mile through glade and bush—not till I had ridden nearly twice as far in the opposite direction—and then to right, and then to left—that I pulled up my broken horse, dropped the rein upon his withers, and sat bent in my saddle under the full conviction that I too was lost.
Lost in the chapparal—that parched and hideous jungle, where every plant that carries a thorn seemed to have place. Around grew acacias, mimosas, gleditschias, robinias, algarobias—all the thorny legumes of the world; above towered the splendid fouquiera with spinous stem; there nourished the “tornillo” (prosopis glandulosa), with its twisted beans; there the “junco” (koeblerinia), whose very leaves are thorns. There saw I spear-pointed yuccas and clawed bromelias (agave and dasylirion); there, too, the universal cactacese (opuntia, mamillaria, cereus, and echinocactus); even the very grass was thorny—for it was a species of the “mezquite-grass,” whose knotted culms are armed with sharp spurs!
Through this horrid thicket I had not passed unscathed; my garments were already torn, my limbs were bleeding.
My limbs—and hers?
Of hers alone was I thinking: those fair-proportioned members—those softly-rounded arms—that smooth, delicate skin—bosom and shoulders bare—the thorn—the scratch—the tear. Oh! it was agony to think!
By action alone might I hope to still my emotions; and once more rousing myself from the lethargy of painful thought, I urged my steed onward through the bushes.