Beyond he had continued his career; rapid and reckless as ever.
Beyond the party along with Spangler had proceeded—without staying to inquire why the horse had shied from his track.
Zeb Stump was more inquisitive, and paused upon this spot.
It was a sterile tract, without herbage, and covered with shingle and sand.
A huge tree overshadowed it, with limbs extending horizontally.
One of these ran transversely to the path over which the horses had passed—so low that a horseman, to shun contact with it, would have to lower his head.
At this branch Zeb Stump stood gazing.
He observed an abrasion upon the bark; that, though very slight, must have been caused by contact with some substance, as hard, if not sounder, than itself.
“Thet’s been done by the skull o’ a human critter,” reasoned he—“a human critter, that must a been on the back o’ a hoss—this side the branch, an off on the t’other.
No livin’ man ked a stud sech a cullizyun as thet, an kep his seat i’ the seddle.
“Hooraw!” he triumphantly exclaimed, after a cursory examination of the ground underneath the tree. “I thort so.
Thur’s the impreshun o’ the throwed rider.
An’ thur’s whar he hez creeped away.
Now I’ve got a explication o’ thet big bump as hez been puzzlin’ me.
I know’d it wan’t did by the claws o’ any varmint; an it didn’t look like the blow eyther o’ a stone or a stick.
Thet ere’s the stick that hez gi’n it.”
With an elastic step—his countenance radiant of triumph—the old hunter strode away from the tree, no longer upon the cattle path, but that taken by the man who had been so violently dismounted. To one unaccustomed to the chapparal, he might have appeared going without a guide, and upon a path never before pressed by human foot. A portion of it perhaps had not.
But Zeb was conducted by signs which, although obscure to the ordinary eye, were to him intelligible as the painted lettering upon a finger-post.
The branch contorted to afford passage for a human form—the displaced tendrils of a creeping plant—the scratched surface of the earth—all told that a man had passed that way.
The sign signified more—that the man was disabled—had been crawling—a cripple!
Zeb Stump continued on, till he had traced this cripple to the banks of a running stream.
It was not necessary for him to go further.
He had made one more splice of the broken thread.
Another, and his clue would be complete!
Chapter Seventy Eight. A Horse-Swop.
With an oath, a sullen look, and a brow black as disappointment could make it, Calhoun turned away from the edge of the chalk prairie, where he had lost the traces of the Headless Horseman.
“No use following further!
No knowing where he’s gone now!
No hope of finding him except by a fluke!
If I go back to the creek I might see him again; but unless I get within range, it’ll end as it’s done before.
The mustang stallion won’t let me come near him—as if the brute knows what I’m wanting!
“He’s even cunninger than the wild sort—trained to it, I suppose, by the mustanger himself.
One fair shot—if I could only get that, I’d settle his courses.
“There appears no chance of stealing upon him; and as to riding him down, it can’t be done with a slow mule like this.
“The sorrel’s not much better as to speed, though he beats this brute in bottom.
I’ll try him to-morrow, with the new shoe.
“If I could only get hold of something that’s fast enough to overtake the mustang! I’d put down handsomely for a horse that could do it.
“There must be one of the sort in the settlement.
I’ll see when I get back.
If there be, a couple of hundred, ay or three, won’t hinder me from having him.”
After he had made these mutterings Calhoun rode away from the chalk prairie, his dark countenance strangely contrasting with its snowy sheen.
He went at a rapid rate; not sparing his horse, already jaded with a protracted journey—as could be told by his sweating coat, and the clots of half-coagulated blood, where the spur had been freely plied upon his flanks. Fresh drops soon appeared as he cantered somewhat heavily on—his head set for the hacienda of Casa del Corvo.
In less than an hour after, his rider was guiding him among the mezquites that skirted the plantation.
It was a path known to Calhoun. He had ridden over it before, though not upon the same horse.
On crossing the bed of an arroyo—dry from a long continuance of drought—he was startled at beholding in the mud the tracks of another horse.
One of them showed a broken shoe, an old hoof-print, nearly eight days old.
He made no examination to ascertain the time. He knew it to an hour. He bent over it, with a different thought—a feeling of surprise commingled with a touch of superstition. The track looked recent, as if made on the day before. There had been wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. Not one of these had wasted it. Even the angry elements appeared to have passed over without destroying it—as if to spare it for a testimony against the outraged laws of Nature—their God.
Calhoun dismounted, with the design to obliterate the track of the three-quarter shoe. Better for him to have spared himself the pains.
The crease of his boot-heel crushing in the stiff mud was only an additional evidence as to who had ridden the broken-shoed horse.
There was one coming close behind capable of collecting it.