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The peace of the hour was intense, and only emphasised by a dull, throbbing undertone the muted murmur of the distant sea. Amber had professed acquaintance with his way; it seemed rather to be intimacy, for when he chose to forsake the main-travelled road he did so boldly, striking off upon a wagon-track which, leading across the fields, delved presently into the heart of the forest.
Suddenly his hair stood erect, and he became like unto the stubble of summer where he formerly dwelled beside his sister, the quail, and the poppy, his brother; and like unto the clayey earth which had wetted his beggar's paws; and like unto the gray-brown color with which September days clothe the hill whose shape he had assumed; like unto the rough cloth of Francis; like unto the wagon-track on the roadway from which he heard the packs of hounds with hanging ears, singing like the angelus; like unto the barren rock which the wild thyme loves.
Thence he moved round in a semicircle until he came upon a wagon-track in the rear of the camp, and, after pausing there, he went forward again, and completed the circle. He returned to his wagon chuckling. Barrington, he remembered, had been lost while travelling northwards to the Zambesie; but the track stopped here. There was not a trace of it to the north or the east or the west.
Whatever partic'lar wagon-track do you-all follow off, may I ask? "It's then this old gent an' I la'nches into a gen'ral discussion onder the head of mes'lancous business, I reckons, an' lie puts it up his long suit, as he calls it, is `moral epidemics. He says he's wrote one book onto 'em, an' sw'ar:; he'll write another if nobody heads him off; the same bein' on-likely.
Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother; it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern, where the darkness only conceals dangers. After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort.
So we led him out to a smooth place near an Indian mound back of the shanty, where father directed us to begin. I mounted for the first memorable lesson, crossed the mound, and set out at a slow walk along the wagon-track made in hauling lumber; then father shouted: "Whup him up, John, whup him up!
It was not more than nine or ten inches across, and was so worn down that it made a narrow trench, as it were, in the deep sod, its lower surface being as smooth as a rolled wagon-track. Over this well-worn track, for ages past, the hurrying feet of wild tribes had passed so many times that even the wiry grass-roots had been killed down.
And then, when the ponies were surging into their collars, with the loose sand and gravel half-way to the hubs, somewhere between thirty and forty Apaches opened fire from the brush on both sides of the wagon-track. The first volley came at close range; so close that in spite of the customary poor marksmanship of their kind the Indians wounded every man in the coach.
He went ashore in the mud and bushes, and, guided more by instinct than by any conscious thought, he started up the wagon-track along the river bank. His furious fever drove him on, talking to himself, and splashing recklessly into the pools of rain-water standing in the road. He never remembered his debarkation.
They goes rangin' 'round, draggin' them religious lariats of theirs, an' I never yet beholds that church which can drive any picket pin of doctrines, or prodooce any hobbles of a creed, that'll hold a Mexican or a nigger, or keep him from prancin' out after the first notion that nods or beckons to him. Thar's no whim an' no fancy which can make so light a wagon-track he won't follow it off.
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