United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"An Indian never yells like that at a horse." We waited quietly for a moment, expecting to hear the yell repeated. It was not, though we soon heard the jangle of bells, which told us he had the horses coming. He appeared off to the right, riding Foxie and racing the others toward camp. "Cougie mucha big dam!" he said leaping off the mustang to confront us.
We climbed a ridge, and found the cedars thinning out into open patches. Then we faced a bare slope of sage and I saw Emett below on his big horse. Foxie bolted down this slope, hurdling the bunches of sage, and showing the speed of which Emett had boasted. The open ground, with its brush, rock and gullies, was easy going for the little mustang. I heard nothing save the wind singing in my ears.
Jones and Jim might as well have vanished off the globe for all I could see or hear of them. A deep, narrow gully into which I had to lead Foxie and carefully coax him out took so much time that when I once more reached a level I could not hear the hounds or get an answer to my signal cry. "Waa-hoo!" I called again.
I had not much hope to hit him so far away, and the five bullets I sent after him, singing and zipping, served only to make him run faster. I mounted Foxie and intercepted the hounds coming up sharply on the trail, and turned them toward my companions, now hallooing from the ridge below. Then the pack lost a good hour on several lion tracks that were a day old, and for such trails we had no time.
"Are you mad?" screamed the wood. "Why, I forbade you to cross the fence!" "You are not my mistress," said the heath. "I am doing as I said I would." Then the wood called the red fox and shook her branches so that a quantity of beech-mast fell upon him and remained hanging in his skin: "Run across to the heath, Foxie, and scatter the beech-mast out there!" said the wood.
I ran to Foxie and vaulted upon him. A flash of yellow appeared among the sage and a string of yelps split the air. "It's Don!" yelled Jim. Well we knew that. What a sight to see him running straight for us! He passed, a savage yellow wolf in his ferocity, and disappeared like a gleam under the gloomy cedars. We spurred after him. The other hounds sped by.
Emett's trail, plain in the yellow ground showed me the way. On entering the cedars again I pulled Foxie in and stopped twice to yell "waa-hoo!" I heard the baying of the hounds, but no answer to my signal. Then I attended to the stern business of catching up. For what seemed a long time, I threaded the maze of cedar, galloped the open sage flats, always on Emett's track.
I knew she had a bet with the squire that she would be the first to hail me legal man, and was prepared for it. She sat on horseback alone in the hazy dewy Midsummer morning, giving clear note: 'Whoop! Harry Richmond! halloo! To which I tossed her a fox's brush, having a jewelled bracelet pendant. She missed it and let it lie, and laughed. 'No, no; it's foxie himself! anybody may have the brush.
His name was Foxie, which suited him well. He carried me at a fast pace on the trail of some one; and he seemed to know that by keeping in this trail part of the work of breaking through the brush was already done for him. Nevertheless, the sharp dead branches, more numerous in a cedar forest than elsewhere, struck and stung us as we passed.
Denting the top of my hat I poured in as much water as it would hold and gave him to drink. Four times he emptied my improvised cup before he was satisfied. Then with a sigh of relief he lay down again. The three of us rested there for perhaps half an hour, Don and I sitting quietly on the wall of the canyon, while Foxie browsed on occasional tufts of grass.
Word Of The Day