But he had not yet yielded to despair.
All at once he started up, as if some thought, suddenly conceived, had given him hopes. A new resolution seemed to have been taken.
“Yes!” he soliloquised, “I shall go to the grove—direct to the grove. Ha! you bloodthirsty yellow-skin, I’ll try your boasted skill. We shall see—we shall see. Maybe you’ll get your reward, but not that you are counting upon. You have yet something to do before you take the scalp of Carlos the cibolero!”
Muttering these words he turned his horse’s head, renewed his hold of the dog and the bridle, and set off across the plain.
He rode at a rapid pace, and without casting a look behind him. He appeared to be in a hurry, though it could not be from fear of being overtaken. No one was likely to come up with him, so long as he kept on at such a pace.
He was silent, except now and then when he addressed some kind word to the dog Cibolo, whose blood ran over his thighs, and down the flanks of the horse. The poor brute was weak, and could no longer have kept his feet.
“Patience, old friend!—patience!—you shall soon have rest from this jolting.”
In less than an hour he had reached the lone grove on the Pecos—the same where he had lately parted with Antonio. Here he halted. It was the goal of his journey. Within that grove he had resolved on passing the remainder of the night, and, if not disturbed, the whole of the following day.
The Pecos at this point, and for many miles above and below, ran between low banks that rose vertically from the water. On both sides its “bottom” was a smooth plain, extending for miles back, where it stepped up to a higher level. It was nearly treeless. Scattered clumps grew at distant intervals, and along its margin a slight fringing of willows. This fringe was not continuous, but broken here and there by gaps, through which the water might be seen. The timber clumps were composed of cotton-wood trees and live-oak, with acacias forming an underwood, and occasionally plants of cactus growing near.
These groves were so small, and so distant from each other, that they did not intercept the general view of the surface, and a person occupying one of them could see a horseman, or other large object, at a great distance. A man concealed in them could not have been approached by his enemy in daylight, if awake and watching. At night, of course, it was different, and the security then afforded depended upon the degree of darkness.