Chapter Eighteen.
The phantom-horse.
I have encountered dangers—not a few—but they were the ordinary perils of flood and field, and I understood them. I have had one limb broken, and its fellow bored with an ounce of lead. I have swum from a sinking ship, and have fallen upon the battle-field. I have looked at the muzzles of a hundred muskets aimed at my person, at less than thirty yards’ distance, and felt the certainty of death though the volley was fired, and I still live.
Well, you will no doubt acknowledge these to be perils. Do not mistake me; I am not boasting of having encountered them; I met them with more or less courage—some of them with fear—but if the fears inspired by all were combined into one emotion of terror, it would not equal in intensity that which I experienced at the moment I pulled up my horse upon the prairie.
I have never been given to superstition; perhaps my religion is not strong enough for that; but at that moment I could not help yielding to a full belief in the supernatural. There was no natural cause—I could think of none—that would account for the mysterious disappearance of the horse. I had often sneered at the credulous sailor and his phantom-ship; had I lived to look upon a phenomenon equally strange yet true—a phantom-horse?
The hunters and trappers had indeed invested the white steed with this character; their stories recurred to my memory at the moment. I had used to smile at the simple credulity of the narrators. I was now prepared to believe them. They were true!
Or was I dreaming? Was it not all a dream? The search for the white steed—the surround—the chase—the long, long gallop?
For some moments I actually fancied that such might be the case; but soon my consciousness became clear again: I was in the saddle, and my panting, smoking steed was under me. That was real and positive. I remembered all the incidents of the chase. They, too, were real of a certainty; the white steed had been there: he was gone. The trappers spoke the truth. The horse was a phantom!
Oppressed with this thought—which had almost become a conviction—I sat in my saddle, bent and silent, my eyes turned upon the earth, but their gaze fixed on vacuity. The lazo had dropped from my fingers, and the bridle-reins trailed untouched over the withers of my horse.