288 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTFRS. 
My horse apparently sympathized with my terror and 
despair, for he rushed on with a frightened speed, which at 
any other time would have been frightful, but now was only 
congenial. I recognized no object that we passed—each 
melted into the other, forming on-either hand a sort of back- 
‘running liquefaction of mountain and tree, of plain and sky, 
that seemed to be keeping time with my motion. I was 
riding through a dim land, where nothing looked real but all 
infinite—where the end was I did not know. 
It was not long before I gained the open plain, upon which 
there was, indeed, nothing but grass and horizon, but which 
appeared to me the wide end of all things. It was like gal- 
loping on clouds toward the moon or “the jumping-off place” 
—the distance seemed so inappreciable! yet I urged on. 
The grass sparrow chirped and flitted, I suppose,—the deer 
turned round to stare, no doubt,—the partridge roared its 
sudden under-bass of wings and skimmed away, bending the 
grass-tops with its windy whirr, for all I know, but yet I saw 
them not but as we see swift shadows in a stormy dream. I 
shouted like a crazy man. 
I fired my other pistol in the air, in the hope that some 
of the party of hunters might hear it—then I paused to 
listen. My frightened and impatient horse would chafe and 
plunge for a moment, and again, as if divining why I paused, 
would be still as death; and now with pricked ears, pointed 
stiffly here and there, seem listening round him for a sound— 
and then would snuff the breeze with his wide, eager nostrils, — 
and with an impulse, headlong and impatient as my own, 
bound onward—as the steady, winging raven that followed, 
over head, our course, croaked an answer that sounded so 
like self-congratulation. 
Away! away! away! and still no sight—and still no sound 
that came to us with any promise—a herd of mustangs would 
sourry off, snorting as we passed—a squad of buffaloes, wheel- 
ing sharp about, and like hogsheads inspired of hoofs, with 
