"With this view, I put the bridle on my horse, and driving him before me, went slowly along for about an hour, when I perceived some lightning from the northeast; a most delightful sight; for it promised rain. The darkness and lightning increased rapidly; and in less than an hour I heard the wind roaring among the bushes. I had already opened my mouth to receive the refreshing drops which I expected; but I was instantly covered with a cloud of sand, driven with such force by the wind as to give a very disagreeable sensation to my face and arms; and I was obliged to mount my horse and stop under a bush, to prevent being suffocated. The sand continued to fly in amazing quantities for near an hour; after which I again set forward, and traveled with difficulty, until ten o'clock. About this time, I was agreeably surprised by some very vivid flashes of lightning, followed by a few heavy drops of rain.
"In a little time the sand ceased to fly, and I alighted and spread out all my clean clothes to collect the rain, which at length I saw would certainly fall. For more than an hour it rained plentifully, and I quenched my thirst by wringing and sucking my clothes. A few moments after I fell into a profound slumber, in spite of the rain which now fell in torrents.
"The sky was clear and the sun was well up when I woke: drenched to the skin I rose as soon as my stiffened limbs would permit, and cast a look at the southern horizon. A line of black dots was distinctly visible, slowly moving westward. Mounting my horse, which was now freshened by his rest and the scanty provender which he had gathered in the night, I pushed on and succeeded in overtaking the party which was a detachment of United States cavalry. Before night we reached the Fort, and early next morning I accompanied a surgeon and two attendants, with an ambulance, to the camp where we found all as we had left them, and overjoyed at my return. When the fractures had been reduced, and Col. Ansley's shoulder put into place, the whole party were brought back to the Fort, quite content to wait awhile before engaging again in a 'grizzly-bear hunt.'"
The strength of nerve and fortitude which maternal love will inspire, is brilliantly illustrated by the story of an adventure with an American lion which happened not long since in the remote territory of Wyoming.
A Mrs. Vredenbergh one night, during the absence of her husband, had retired with her three children, to rest, in a chamber, on the first floor of the cabin where she lived, when an enormous mountain-lion leaped into the room through an open window placed at some distance from the ground for purposes of ventilation. The brute after entering the apartment whined and shook itself, and then lay down upon the floor in a watchful attitude with its eyes fixed upon the bed where lay Mrs. V., almost paralyzed with fright at this dangerous visitor. Her children were her first thought. Two of them were in a cot beyond the bed, where she lay; the third, an infant of six months, was reposing in its mother's arms.
Mrs. Vredenbergh remembered in an instant that perfect silence and stillness might prevent the brute from springing upon them; and accordingly she suppressed every breath and motion on her own part, while her children luckily were sleeping so profoundly that their breathing could not be heard. After a few minutes the monster began to relax the steady glare of his great green orbs, and winked lazily, purring loudly as though in good humor. The first powerful impulse to scream and fly to the adjoining apartment having been repressed, the matron's heart became calmer and her mind employed itself in devising a thousand plans for saving herself and her children. Her husband's gun hung loaded above the head of the bed, but it could not be reached without rising; if she woke her children she feared her action in so doing or the noise they would make would bring the monster upon them. She had heard that the mountain-lion could not attack human beings when his hunger had been appeased, and from a noise she had heard in the cow-house just after retiring, she surmised that the brute had made a raid upon the cattle and glutted himself; this conjecture received confirmation from the placidity of the animal's demeanor. Resting upon this theory she finally maintained her original policy of perfect stillness, trusting that her husband would soon return. Her greatest fear now was that the infant might wake and cry, for she was well aware that the ferocity of the mountain-lion is roused by nothing so quickly as the cry of a child.
A full hour passed in this manner. The moon was at its full, and from her position on the couch, Mrs. Vredenbergh could, without turning her head, see every motion of the creature. It lay with its head between its forepaws in the posture assumed by the domestic cat when in a state of semi-watchfulness, approaching to a doze. The senses of the matron were strung to an almost painful acuteness. The moonlight streaming in at the window was to her eyes like the glare of the sun at noonday: the ticking of the clock on the wall fell on her ears, each tick like a sharply pointed hammer seeming to bruise the nerve. A keen thrill ran like a knife through her tense frame when the infant stirred and moaned in his sleep. The lion roused himself in an instant, and fixing his eyes upon the bed came towards it arching his back and yawning. He rubbed himself against the bedstead and stood for a moment so near that Mrs. V. could have touched him with her hand, then turned back and commenced pacing up and down the room. The infant fortunately ceased its moaning and sighing gently fell back into its slumbers; and again the beast, purring and winking, lay down and resumed its former position.
The quick tread of the lady's husband at this moment was heard; as he put his hand upon the latch to enter, Mrs. V. could contain herself no longer, and uttered a series of loud shrieks. The lion, rising, bounded over the head of Mr. Vredenbergh as he entered the cabin, and disappeared in the forest.
The safety of the family consisted partly perhaps in the fact that the intruder before entering the house had satiated his appetite by gorging himself upon a calf, the remains of which were next day discovered in the cow-house; but the preservation of herself and children was also due to the self-control with which Mrs. Vredenbergh maintained herself in that trying situation.