“Your fellow tenant of the jacalé might not like being intruded upon by visitors—more especially a stranger?”
“On the contrary, he’s but too glad to see visitors at any time—whether strangers or acquaintances. My foster-brother is the last man to shun society; of which, poor fellow! he sees precious little on the Alamo.”
“Your foster-brother?”
“Yes. Phelim O’Neal by name—like myself a native of the Emerald Isle, and shire of Galway; only perhaps speaking a little better brogue than mine.”
“Oh! the Irish brogue. I should so like to hear it spoken by a native of Galway. I am told that theirs is the richest. Is it so, Mr Gerald?”
“Being a Galwegian myself, my judgment might not be reliable; but if you will condescend to accept Phelim’s hospitality for half-an-hour, he will, no doubt, give you an opportunity of judging for yourself.”
“I should be delighted. ’Tis something so new. Let papa and the rest of them wait. There are plenty of ladies without me; or the gentlemen may amuse themselves by tracing up our tracks. ’Twill be as good a horse hunt as they are likely to have. Now, sir, I’m ready to accept your hospitality.”
“There’s not much to offer you, I fear. Phelim has been several days by himself, and as he’s but an indifferent hunter, his larder is likely to be low. ’Tis fortunate you had finished luncheon before the stampede.”
It was not Phelim’s larder that was leading Louise Poindexter out of her way, nor yet the desire to listen to his Connemara pronunciation. It was not curiosity to look at the jacalé of the mustanger; but a feeling of a far more irresistible kind, to which she was yielding, as if she believed it to be her fate!
* * * * *
She paid a visit to the lone hut, on the Alamo; she entered under its roof; she scanned with seeming interest its singular penates; and noted, with pleased surprise, the books, writing materials, and other chattels that betokened the refinement of its owner; she listened with apparent delight to the palthogue of the Connemara man, who called her a “coleen bawn;” she partook of Phelim’s hospitality—condescendingly tasting of everything offered, except that which was most urgently pressed upon her, “a dhrap of the crayther, drawn fresh from the dimmyjan;” and finally made her departure from the spot, apparently in the highest spirits.
Alas! her delight was short-lived: lasting only so long as it was sustained by the excitement of the novel adventure. As she recrossed the flower prairie, she found time for making a variety of reflections; and there was one that chilled her to the very core of her heart.
Was it the thought that she had been acting wrongly in keeping her father, her brother, and friends in suspense about her safety? Or had she become conscious of playing a part open to the suspicion of being unfeminine?
Not either. The cloud that darkened her brow in the midst of that blossoming brightness, was caused by a different, and far more distressing, reflection. During all that day, in the journey from the fort, after overtaking her in the chase, in the pursuit while protecting her, lingering by her side on the shore of the lake, returning across the prairie, under his own humble roof—in short everywhere—her companion had only been polite—had only behaved as a gentleman!
Chapter Eighteen.
Jealousy upon the Trail.
Of the two-score rescuers, who had started in pursuit of the runaway, but few followed far. Having lost sight of the wild mares, the mustang, and the mustanger, they began to lose sight of one another; and before long became dispersed upon the prairie—going single, in couples, or in groups of three and four together. Most of them, unused to tracking up a trail, soon strayed from that taken by the manada; branching off upon others, made, perhaps, by the same drove upon some previous stampede.
The dragoon escort, in charge of a young officer—a fresh fledgling from West Point—ran astray upon one of these ramifications, carrying the hindmost of the field along with it.
It was a rolling prairie through which the pursuit was conducted, here and there intersected by straggling belts of brushwood. These, with the inequalities of the surface, soon hid the various pursuing parties from one another; and in twenty minutes after the start, a bird looking from the heavens above, might have beheld half a hundred horsemen, distributed into half a score of groups—apparently having started from a common centre—spurring at full speed towards every quarter of the compass!
But one was going in the right direction—a solitary individual, mounted upon a large strong-limbed chestnut horse; that, without any claim to elegance of shape, was proving the possession both of speed and bottom. The blue frock-coat of half military cut, and forage cap of corresponding colour, were distinctive articles of dress habitually worn by the ex-captain of volunteer cavalry—Cassius Calhoun. He it was who directed the chestnut on the true trail; while with whip and spur he was stimulating the animal to extraordinary efforts. He was himself stimulated by a thought—sharp as his own spurs—that caused him to concentrate all his energies upon the abject in hand.
Like a hungry hound he was laying his head along the trail, in hopes of an issue that might reward him for his exertions.
What that issue was he had but vaguely conceived; but on occasional glance towards his holsters—from which protruded the butts of a brace of pistols—told of some sinister design that was shaping itself in his soul.
But for a circumstance that assisted him, he might, like the others, have gone astray. He had the advantage of them, however, in being guided by two shoe-tracks he had seen before. One, the larger, he recollected with a painful distinctness. He had seen it stamped upon a charred surface, amid the ashes of a burnt prairie. Yielding to an undefined instinct, he had made a note of it in his memory, and now remembered it.
Thus directed, the ci-devant captain arrived among the copses, and rode into the glade where the spotted mustang had been pulled up in such a mysterious manner. Hitherto his analysis had been easy enough. At this point it became conjecture. Among the hoof-prints of the wild mares, the shoe-tracks were still seen, but no longer going at a gallop. The two animals thus distinguished must have been halted, and standing in juxtaposition.
Whither next? Along the trail of the manada, there was no imprint of iron; nor elsewhere! The surface on all sides was hard, and strewn with pebbles. A horse going in rude gallop, might have indented it; but not one passing over it at a tranquil pace.
And thus had the spotted mustang and blood bay parted from that spot. They had gone at a walk for some score yards, before starting on their final gallop towards the mustang trap.
The impatient pursuer was puzzled. He rode round and round, and along the trail of the wild mares, and back again, without discovering the direction that had been taken by either of the ridden horses.
He was beginning to feel something more than surprise, when the sight of a solitary horseman advancing along the trail interrupted his uncomfortable conjectures.
It was no stranger who was drawing near. The colossal figure, clad in coarse habiliments, bearded to the buttons of his blanket coat, and bestriding the most contemptible looking steed that could have been found within a hundred miles of the spot, was an old acquaintance. Cassius Calhoun knew Zebulon Stump, and Zeb Stump knew Cash Calhoun, long before either had set foot upon the prairies of Texas.
“You hain’t seed nuthin’ o’ the young lady, hev ye, Mister Calhoun?” inquired the hunter, as he rode up, with an unusual impressiveness of manner. “No, ye hain’t,” he continued, as if deducing his inference from the blank looks of the other. “Dog-gone my cats! I wonder what the hell hev becomed o’ her! Kewrious, too; sech a rider as she air, ter let the durned goat o’ a thing run away wi’ her. Wal! thur’s not much danger to be reeprehended. The mowstanger air putty sartin to