Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 5

by Various

The sun set behind the high trees of an island that bounded my view westward, and there being little or no twilight in those southerly latitudes, the broad day was almost instantaneously replaced by the darkness of night. I could proceed no further without losing the track of the three horsemen; and as I happened to be close to an island, I fastened my mustang to a branch with the lasso, and threw myself on the grass under the trees.

This night, however, I had no fancy for tobacco. Neither the cigars nor the dulcissimus tempted me. I tried to sleep, but in vain. Once or twice I began to doze, but was roused again by violent cramps and twitchings in all my limbs. I know of nothing more horrible than a night passed as I passed that one—faint and weak, enduring torture from hunger and thirst, striving after sleep, and never finding it. The sensation of hunger I experienced can only be compared to that of twenty pairs of pincers tearing at the stomach.

With the first grey light of morning I got up and prepared for departure. It was a long business, however, to get my horse ready. The saddle, which at other times I could throw upon his back with two fingers, now seemed of lead, and it was as much as I could do to lift it. I had still more difficulty in drawing the girths tight; but at last I accomplished this, and, scrambling upon my beast, rode off. Luckily my mustang’s spirit was pretty well taken out of him by the last two days’ work; for if he had been fresh, the smallest spring on one side would have sufficed to throw me out of the saddle. As it was, I sat upon him like an automaton, hanging forward over his neck, sometimes grasping the mane, and almost unable to use either rein or spur.

I had ridden on for some hours in this helpless plight, when I came to a place where the three horsemen whose track I was following had apparently made a halt—perhaps had passed the previous night. The grass was trampled and beaten down in a circumference of some fifty or sixty feet, and there was a confusion in the horse-tracks as if they had ridden backwards and forwards. Fearful of losing the right trail, I was looking carefully about me to see in what direction they had recommenced their journey, when I noticed something white amongst the long grass. I got off my horse to pick it up. It was a piece of paper with my own name written upon it; and I recognised it as the back of a letter in which my tobacco had been wrapped, and which I had thrown away at my halting-place of the preceding night. I looked around, and recognised the island and the very tree under which I had slept or endeavoured to sleep. The horrible truth instantly flashed across me—the horse-tracks I had followed were my own: since the preceding morning, I had been riding in a circle!

I stood for a few seconds thunderstruck by this discovery, and then sank upon the ground in utter despair. At that moment I should have been thankful to any one who would have knocked me on the head as I lay. All I wished for was to die as speedily as possible.

I remained I know not how long in a desponding, half-insensible state upon the grass. Several hours must have elapsed; for when I got up, the sun was low in the western heavens. My head was so weak and wandering that I could not well explain to myself how it was that I had been thus riding after my own shadow. Yet the thing was clear enough. Without landmarks, and in the monotonous scenery of the prairie, I might have gone on for ever following my horse’s track, and going back when I thought I was going forwards, had it not been for the discovery of the tobacco-paper. I was, as I subsequently learned, in the Jacinto prairie, one of the most beautiful in Texas, full sixty miles long and broad, but in which the most experienced hunters never risked themselves without a compass. It was little wonder, then, that I, a mere boy of two-and-twenty, just escaped from college, should have gone astray in it.

I now gave myself up for lost, and with the bridle twisted round my hand, and holding on as well as I could by the saddle and mane, I let my horse choose his own road. It would perhaps have been better had I done this sooner: the beast’s instinct would probably have led him to some plantation. When he found himself left to his own guidance, he threw up his head, snuffed the air three or four times, and then, turning round, set off in a contrary direction to that he was before following, and at such a brisk pace that it was as much as I could do to keep upon him. Every jolt caused me so much pain, that I was more than once tempted to let myself fall off his back.

At last night came, and, thanks to the lasso, which kept my horse in awe, I managed to dismount and secure him. The whole night through I suffered from racking pains in head, limbs, and body. I felt as if I had been broken on the wheel; not an inch of my whole person but ached and smarted. My hands were grown thin and transparent, my cheeks fallen in, my eyes deep sunk in their sockets. When I touched my face, I could feel the change that had taken place; and as I did so, I caught myself once or twice laughing like a child. I was becoming delirious.

In the morning I could scarcely rise from the ground, so utterly weakened and exhausted was I by my three days’ fasting, anxiety, and fatigue. I have heard say that a man in good health can live nine days without food. It may be so in a room, or in a prison, but assuredly not in a Texan prairie. I am quite certain that the fifth day would have seen the last of me.

I should never have been able to mount my mustang, but he had fortunately lain down, so I got into the saddle, and he rose up with me and started off of his own accord. As I rode along, the strangest visions passed before me. I saw the most beautiful cities that painter’s fancy ever conceived, with towers, cupolas, and columns, whose summits lost themselves in the clouds; marble basins and fountains of bright sparkling water, rivers flowing with liquid gold and silver, and gardens whose trees were bowed down with magnificent fruit—fruit which I had not strength to raise my hand and pluck. My limbs were heavy as lead, my tongue, lips, and gums, dry and parched. I breathed with the greatest difficulty, and within me was a burning sensation, as if I had swallowed hot coals; whilst my extremities, both hands and feet, did not appear to form a part of myself, but to be instruments of torture affixed to me, and causing me the most intense suffering.