His face lighted up with the beauty of his boyish days. He straightened himself in his saddle, gave his fair moustache a twirl, and hummed, for gayety of heart, “Ah non giunge!” to the beat of his mustang’s hoofs.
We were riding at the bottom of a little hollow. The dusty trail across the unfenced wilderness, worn smooth and broad as a turnpike by the march of myriad caravans, climbed up the slopes before and behind us, like the wake of a ship between surges. The mail train had disappeared over the ridge. Our horses had gone with it. Brent and I were alone, as if the world held no other tenants.
Suddenly we heard the rush of a horseman after us.
Before we could turn he was down the hillock,—he was at our side.
He pulled his horse hard upon his haunches and glared at us. A fierce look it was; yet a bewildered look, as of one suddenly cheated of a revenge he had laid finger on.
He glared at us, we gazed at him, an instant, without a word.
A ghastly pair—this apparition—horse and man! The horse was a tall, gaunt white. There were the deep hollows of age over his bloodshot eyes. His outstretched head showed that he shared his master’s eagerness of pursuit. Death would have chosen such a steed for a gallop on one of death’s errands.
Death would have commissioned such a rider to bear a sentence of death. A tall, gaunt man, with the loose, long frame of a pioneer. But the brown vigor of a pioneer was gone from him. His face was lean and bloodless. It was clear where some of his blood had found issue. A strip of old white blanket, soiled with dust and blood, was turbaned askew about his head, and under it there showed the ugly edges of a recent wound.
When he pulled up beside us, his stringy right hand was ready upon the butt of a revolver. He dropped the muzzle as he looked at us.
For what horror was this man the embodied Nemesis!