860 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



exclaimed my companion, as he wlieeled his horse and dashed 

 down the hill for the valley. Cold comfort that — "take 

 care of yourself," indeed ! 



I made one more desperate and unavailing effort to break 

 the trance of the vile brute I strode, then sprang from his 

 back, ran under the drooping moss, stepped up into the live 

 oak, the forks of which were not over three feet from the 

 ground, ran along up one of its massive limbs, and had 

 barely time to conceal myself behind a dense cluster of the 

 moss, when, with deafening whooping, a bronzed and feather- 

 bedizened crew of some twenty Comanches swept into the 

 valley just beneath me. They paused for an instant on 

 seeing my horse, who was standing as I left him, and one 

 of them took the lariat from the saddle-bow, but just then 

 they caught sight of the flying Virginian, and, with a yell 

 that made the very leaves shiver, dashed on in pursuit of 

 him. 



This broke the spell upon my Mustang, and, with a sudden 

 start and shrill neigh, he plunged wildly through the crowd, 

 dragging the warrior who held the lariat from his seat, and 

 nearly unhorsing two or three others ; then, as if the very 

 fiends were lashing him with red hot steel, he flew, rather 

 than ran, out of the valley into the plains, neighing louder 

 than the savages howled, till he was out of sight ! In a little 

 while they, too, had disappeared ; a gun or two followed at 

 momentary intervals, and then the echoes faded into pulseless 

 and oppressive silence, broken only by the sobbing moans 

 of the wounded bear beneath me. 



I was stupefied. These events were so strange, and had 

 followed each other so rapidly, that I was dizzy and utterly 

 confounded. Was it enchanted land ? Here was I, three 

 hundred miles beyond the remotest outskirts of civilization, 

 perched in a tree ; my horse gone ; friends scattered or 

 scalped ; this infernal silence weighing upon my lungs. No ! 

 There is the dismal moan again ! I must go down and stop 



