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The false trail forked, showing that the six had separated into two parties of three riders, each aiming to pass so the hoofprints would lead one to believe around the two ends of a lone hill that sat squarely down on the mesa like a stone treasure chest dropped there by the gods when the world was young. The Happy Family drew rein and eyed the parting of the ways dubiously.
It was the same one that they had seen more than an hour and a half ago; Rawson-Clew recognised it by a peculiar warty growth where the branches forked; they had now approached it from the other side, but clearly it was the same one, and they had come round in a circle. He stopped and pointed it out to her.
One was round each of their necks, while others they had twisted like bracelets, encircling their arms; and one of the girls was holding another in her hand, allowing its forked tongue to dart out towards her face.
On went the fire, running along the ground as if it had been strewed with gunpowder then for an instant playing round some tall clump, out of which directly afterwards forked flames darted forth, and quickly reduced it to ashes, while thick volumes of smoke curled upwards to the sky.
But hardly had the words escaped, when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
A heavy shower of hail was falling, each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and serpents.
Before the Gaucho home, to which they were hastening, appeared on the horizon, the whole sky had become overclouded and vivid forked lightning began to play.
Then, being no gentle and timid young wife who could be crushed by a savage and unexpected blow and find her relief in a flood of tears, but a proud and determined woman with the blood of two ancient houses in her veins, after the briefest pause she struck back at Dundee, carrying herself at her full height, throwing back her head with an attitude of scorn, her face pale because intense feeling had called the blood back to the heart, and her eyes blazing with fury, as when the forked lightning bursts from the cloud and shatters a house or strikes a living person dead.
The horrid, serpent-like head, with its black tongue, forked with red, hanging out of its jaws, dangled against the horse's side. Its neck was covered with long blue hair, its sides with scales of green and gold. Its back was of corrugated skin, of a purple hue. Its belly was similar in nature, but its colour was leaden, dashed with blotches of livid blue.
It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led the ancients to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forked wand; but when we inquire why it was sometimes symbolized as a flower or leaf; or when we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash, hazel, white-thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to be in a certain sense embodiments of it, we are entering upon a subject too complicated to be satisfactorily treated within the limits of the present paper.
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