In that one instant of dead stillness, when the noise of the cattle was hushed, and our horses ceased champing to listen, I seemed to hear the clang of galloping hoofs, not far away to the southward.
Galloping hoofs, surely I heard them. Or was it only the charge of a fresh blast down the mountain-side, uprooting ancient pines, and flinging great rocks from crag to chasm?
And that strange, terrible, human, inhuman sound, outringing the noise of the hoofs, and making the silence a ghastly horror,—was it a woman’s scream?
No; it could only be my fevered imagination, that found familiar sounds in the inarticulate voices of the wilderness. I listened long and intently. The wind sighed, and raved, and threatened again. I heard the dismal howling of wolves far away in the darkness.
I kept a double watch of two hours, and then, calling Brent to do his share, threw myself on the grass and slept soundly.
CHAPTER XVI.
ARMSTRONG.
I awoke in the solemn quiet dawn of the next morning with my forebodings of ill gone, and in their stead what I could not but deem a baseless hopefulness for our new friends’ welfare.
Brent did not share it. His usual gay matin-song was dumb. He cowered, chilled and spiritless, by our camp-fire. Breakfast was an idle ceremony to both. We sat and looked at each other. His despair began to infect me. This would not do.
I left my friend, sitting unnerved and purposeless, and walked to the mail-riders’ camp.