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Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward, waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of the horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every hoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth.
We reined, up and listened. There were men in conversation; and from their voices each moment growing more distinct, we could tell that they were approaching us. They were coming down the main road from the direction of the village. The hoof-stroke told us they were on horseback, and, consequently, that they were white men.
The struggle is over; no sound is heard, save the hoof-stroke of the guanacos, llamas, and alpacos, that cover the plain in their wild flight. Leon could no longer restrain his curiosity; but ran off to the scene of the slaughter. There he counted no less than nineteen vicuñas lying dead, each one stabbed in the ribs! The Indian assured him that it was not the first battue of the kind he had made.
Scarce has the last hoof-stroke of the Texan horses died away down the valley, when the buzzards forsake their perch upon the bluff, and swoop down to the creek bottom. Simultaneously the wolves grand grey and coyote come sneaking out from the thicket's edge; at first cautiously, soon with bolder front, approaching the abandoned bodies.
Only a slight noise it was, but one in that place of peculiar significance, being the hoof-stroke of a horse. "Good!" he ejaculates in a whisper, "it must be his." Hearkening a little longer, he hears the sound again, apparently further off, and as his practised ear tells him, the distance increasing. "It must be his horse," he reiterates, still continuing to listen.
A hoof-stroke upon a rock, the glide and rattle of revolving wheels, voices in conversation, and now and then a calling voice, were all the sounds heard above the rustle of the mighty movement. Yet was there upon every countenance the look with which men make haste to see some dreadful sight, some sudden wreck, or ruin, or calamity of war.
"Strange the horses do not neigh, or give some sign of their presence! One would have thought our approach would have startled them. But no, there is no whimper, no hoof-stroke; yet we must be close to them now. I never knew of horses remaining so still? What can they be doing? Where are they?" "Ay, where are they?" echoed D'Hauteville; "surely this is the spot where we left them?"
The struggle is over; no sound is heard, save the hoof-stroke of the guanacos, llamas, and alpacos, that cover the plain in their wild flight. Leon could no longer restrain his curiosity; but ran off to the scene of the slaughter. There he counted no less than nineteen vicunas lying dead, each one stabbed in the ribs! The Indian assured him that it was not the first battue of the kind he had made.
You hear the "flap, flap" of his long wings as he dashes down among the cocuyos. You hear the hoof-stroke on the hard plain, the "crop" of the browsing steed, and the tinkling of the bit-ring, for the horses eat bridled. At intervals, a drowsy hunter mutters through his sleep, battling in dreams with some terrible foe. Thus goes the night. These are its voices. They cease as daybreak approaches.
Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward, waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of the horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every hoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth.
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