ugh to prove that he
had been there, but not enough to accomplish anything. It was just
enough to let Tom see how useless it was to dig there.

Tom's two weeks of tramping in the mountains had given him a ravenous
appetite; his bronco was hitched so that he could not take to his heels
and leave his master to find his own way home; and as he sat there on
his blanket, dividing his attention between his cup of coffee,
hard-tack, and bacon, he thought seriously of going back to
headquarters. This was undoubtedly the remotest point reached by the
man, and if one of his experience should be frightened out by a few
shovelfuls of earth, or scared at finding himself in a pocket, Tom
thought himself entitled to follow his lead. It had taken him two weeks
to reach the pocket (he had managed to keep close run of the days); it
would probably take him fully as long to return, and so he would fill
Mr. Parsons' contract anyway. And so it was settled that he was to go
home; but there's many a slip between determining upon a thing and doing
it. He finished his coffee and bacon, led the horse down to the spring,
from which he had scraped the leaves, to give him a drink, and rolled
himself up in his blanket to go to sleep with his ready rifle safe
beside him.

How long he slept he did not know, but he was awakened about midnight by
a sound he had never heard before. It came from his horse, but it wasn't
a neigh: it was the sound of fear, and made the cold chills creep all
over him. He started up with his rifle in his hand, but did not have
time to get off the blanket. Another shriek, which sounded like somebody
in fearful bodily agony, came from the bushes, and the next minute the
horse was on the ground and struggling in the grasp of some animal or
thing which Tom could not remember to have seen or heard of before. It
had a long neck, long legs, and a wonderfully high body which was
increased materially by a hump on its back. The horse was as nothing in
its grasp, and the struggle took place not over ten feet from the
blanket on which Tom was sitting.

"Great Moses!" was Tom's mental ejaculation.

He sat for an instant as if spellbound, and then his rifle arose to his
face. He was sure he had a good shot at it and expected to see it drop;
but instead of that it gave another shriek, tossed the horse away from
it, breaking like thread the lariat with which he was confined, and with
a single jump disappeared in the bushes. Tom listened,