Suddenly another sensation went creeping along my nerves. I sat bolt upright. There was a feeling of human presence, of stealthy approach coming up against the night-wind and crushing its roar with a sound more penetrating.
Brent, too, was on the alert.
“Some one at our horses,” he whispered.
We dashed forward. There was a rustle of flight through the bushes. We each fired a shot. The noise ceased.
“Stop!” said my friend, as I was giving chase. “We must not leave the horses. They will stampede them while we are off.”
“They? perhaps it was only a cayote or a wolf. Why, Fulano! old fellow!”
Fulano trotted up, neighing, and licked my hand. His lariat had been cut,—a clean cut with a knife. We were only just in time.
“We must keep watch till morning,” said I. “I have been drowsing. I will take the first hour.”
Brent, with a moan of weariness, threw himself down again on the grass. I sat watchful.
The night-wind went roaring on. It loves those sweeps and surges of untenanted plain, as it loves the lifts and levels of the barren sea. The fitful gale rushed down as if it boiled over the edge of some great hollow in the mountains, and then stayed to gather force for another overflow. In its pauses I could hear the stir and murmur of the Mormon cattle, a thousand and more. But once there came a larger pause; the air grew silent, as if it had never known a breeze, or as if all life and motion between earth and sky were utterly and forever quelled.