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. 
Traised 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 wasa 
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- 
stiousness that J had been having a very ridiculous dream ; 
bevause, 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 
abunt, 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- 
rtromes congealed into green stillness, humbled by a Higher 
