was our undoing. The very
motion of my throwing up my hat, boyish as it was, gave fright to my
horse, already startled by the shot. He flung up his head high, snorted,
and was off, fast as he could go. I followed him on foot, rapidly as I
could, but he would none of that, and was all for keeping away from me
at a safe distance. This the girl saw, and she rode up now, springing
down and offering me her horse.

"Stay here," I called to her as I mounted. "I'll be back directly"; and
then with such speed as I could spur out of my new mount, I started
again after the fugitive.

It was useless. Her horse, already lame and weary, and further
handicapped by my weight, could not close with the free animal, and
without a rope to aid me in the capture, it would have been almost
impossible to have stopped him, even had I been able to come alongside.
I headed him time and again, and turned him, but it was to no purpose.
At last I suddenly realized that I had no idea how far I had gone or in
what direction. I must now think of my companion. Never was more welcome
sight than when I saw her on a distant ridge, waving her hat. I gave up
the chase and returned to her, finding that in her fatigue she had sunk
to the ground exhausted. She herself had run far away from the spot
where I had left 'her.

"I was afraid," she panted. "I followed. Can't you catch him?"

"No," said I, "he's gone. He probably will go back to the trail."

"No," she said, "they run wild, sometimes. But now what shall we do?"

I looked at her in anxiety. I had read all my life of being afoot on the
Plains. Here was the reality.

"But you are hurt," she cried. "Look, your wound is bleeding."

I had not known it, but my neck was wet with blood.

"Get up and ride," she said. "We must be going." But I held the stirrup
for her instead, smiling.

"Mount!" I said, and so I put her up.

"Shall we go back to camp?" she asked in some perturbation, apparently
forgetting that there was no camp, and that by this time the wagons
would be far to the west. For reasons of my own I thought it better to
go back to the dead antelope, and so I told her.

"It is over there," she said, pointing in the direction from which she
thought she had come. I differed with her, remembering I had ridden with
the sun in my face when following it, and remembering the shape of the
hilltop near by. Finally my guess proved correct, and we found the dead
animal, nearly a mile from where she h