My design of the previous night—to follow back my own trail—was no longer practicable. The rain had effaced the tracks! I remembered that I had passed over wide stretches of light dusty soil, where the hoof scarcely impressed itself. I remembered that the rain had been of that character known as “planet showers,” with large heavy drops, that, in such places, must have blotted out every trace of the trail. To follow the “back-track” was no longer possible.
I had not before thought of this difficulty; and now, that it presented itself to my mind, it was accompanied by a new feeling of dread. I felt that I was lost!
As you sit in your easy-chair, you may fancy that this is a mere bagatelle—a little bewilderment that one may easily escape from who has a good horse between his thighs. It is only to strike boldly out, and by riding on in a straight line, you must in time arrive somewhere.
No doubt, that is your idea; but permit me to inform you that the success of such a course depends very much upon circumstances. It would indeed be trusting to blind chance. You might arrive “somewhere,” and that somewhere might be the very point from which you had started!
Do you fancy you can ride ten miles in a direct line over a prairie, without a single object to guide you?
Be undeceived, then; you cannot!
The best mounted men have perished under such circumstances. It may take days to escape out of a fifty-mile prairie, and days bring death. Hunger and thirst soon gain strength and agony—the sooner that you know you have not the wherewith to satisfy the one, nor quench the other. Besides, there is in your very loneliness a feeling of bewilderment, painful to an extreme degree, and from which only the oldest prairie-men are free. Your senses lose half their power, your energy is diminished, and your resolves become weak and vacillating. You feel doubtful at each step, as to whether you be following the right path, and are ready at every moment to turn into another. Believe me, it is a fearful thing to be alone when lost upon the prairies!
I felt this keenly enough. I had been on the great plains before, but it was the first time I had the misfortune to wander astray on them, and I was the more terrified that I already hungered to no common degree.
There was something singular, too, in the circumstances that had brought me into my present situation. The disappearance of the white steed—although accounted for by perfectly natural causes—had left upon my mind a strange impression. That he should have lured me so far, and then eluded me in such a way! I could not help fancying design in it: and fancying so, I could attribute such design only to a higher intelligence—in fact, to some supernatural cause!
I was again on the edge of superstition. My mind began to give way and yield itself to hideous fancies.