THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 295 



almost unnecessary, for the unconquerable drowsiness which 

 follows eating, after long hunger and excessive fatigue and 

 excitement, was already upon me ; and the last I saw of her 

 she was standing by the side of my horse with caressing words 

 and gestures as he nibbled feebly at the grass amidst which 

 he stood, with an uncertain sort of air, as if he would just as 

 soon lay down again, or rather fall down ! as not ! 



When I awoke again, the sun was getting low, and its 

 shadows even fell over the damp bed upon which I had fallen. 

 I raised myself to a sitting posture with a vigor apparently 

 renewed, as I felt for the moment the deepest astonishment 

 and mystified enough by what had been occurring. It all 

 seemed like a dream. It could not be real ! There was a 

 vague image of a strange woman with a rifle in her hand, 

 struggling through my brain, and I tried to remember her 

 cool, patronizing words, and her plain, remarkable face, with 

 the fawn-skin hood, and her hardy looking figure, with its 

 anomalous dress of buck-skin ; but it all seemed too unreal, 

 and I found myself standing erect, with a sort of smiling con- 

 sciousness that I had been having a very ridiculous dream ; 

 because, there was my noble gray standing the usual distance 

 off in the deep grass, and browsing as if he expected a long 

 day's work, and was laying in the necessary supply of pro- 

 vender therefor. 



To be sure, the grass seemed strangely levelled and twirled 

 about, and it was odd what a number of twigs and limbs of 

 trees lay strewed around, considering there was nothing like 

 a tree in sight ; but yet I could make nothing out of it. How 

 came my saddle off? How came Gray to look so comfortable ? 

 How came I so lame in my left leg that I could not step more 

 than half an inch at a time after I got up, with a sort of 

 numbed struggle, to my feet, and realized the extent and 

 dreariness of the devastation in the midst of which I stood? 

 The prairie presented the appearance of a thousand mael- 

 Btromes congealed into green stillness, humbled by a Higher 



