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And then, just as the mustang gained the strip of road before the square-fronted house, it gave a sudden, unlooked-for, outward leap, reared with a wild snort, and, whirling, dashed past the porch riderless. With an exclamation, Fong Wu flung his banjo aside and ran to the road. There under a manzanita bush, huddled and still, lay a figure.
The farmer carried a gun strapped to his side as he ploughed, and he scarcely dared venture into the woods for the winter's supply of fuel and game. Hardly a day passed on which a riderless horse did not come galloping into some lonely clearing, telling of afresh tragedy on the trail. The rousing of the Indians against the frontiersmen was an odious act.
This for a moment checked the advance of the rebels, and Helmar saw several of them dismount. Out rang the enemy's rifles, and a heavy volley of lead flew round the heads of the fugitives. Helmar gave the word, and again the carbines rang out, simultaneously several of the rebels' horses ran off riderless.
He even beheld, with tolerable firmness, the spectacle of a horse dashing blindfold and riderless, and mad with fear and pain, against the barrier rebounding whence to the earth with a broken shoulder, it was forced again on its three legs, and led stumbling from the ring.
There, in a tangle of his horse's harness and of embroidered trappings, the Sieur de la Montaigne lay stretched upon the ground, with his saddle near by, and his riderless horse was trotting aimlessly about at the farther end of the lists.
The command rang out simultaneously from all sides, and there was the jingle of harness and the thud of horses' hoofs. Here the attack was hurled back, horses riderless, here horse and man pitched forward to be shot and stabbed; and here the same, and here; but yonder the defenders had been driven in, and there too. A dozen horsemen were in the square, and although they fell, confusion had begun.
They had need for the Emir's officer had stayed too long in his blind belief in the success of the Khalifa's troops the avenging forces were close behind, and the dervishes were falling fast, dotting the plain with their white garments, while riderless horses and camels careered wildly here and there.
Their arrival terminated a period of anxious doubt as to their fate. The town, which had been almost entirely denuded of troops, was left in charge of Captain Ford-Hutchinson. At about two o'clock in the afternoon of the 16th a few stragglers from the Egyptian cavalry with half-a-dozen riderless horses knocked at the gates, and vague but sinister rumours spread on all sides.
At this moment the count rode up, followed by two or three of his retainers, and throwing himself from his horse, clasped his daughter in his arms. "My child, my child!" he exclaimed; "thank God, you are alive! I saw your horse dash past me riderless, and flew to your assistance. But there is blood upon your dress." "It is my blood!" said the slave, calmly.
Down the road he crashed, pursued by witches whose persistence put to shame the efforts of those famed ladies of Tam O'Shanter in the long ago; if he had looked over his shoulder, he might have discovered that he was followed by a riderless horse, nothing more. But a riderless horse is a gruesome thing sometimes. The further adventures of Mr.
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