the white steed, and this awoke me to a process of reasoning.
Had the horse been a phantom, he could not have made a track. I had
never heard of the track of a ghost; though a _horse-ghost_ might be
different from the common kind!

My reflections on this head ended in the determination to follow the
trail as far as it should lead; of course to the point where the steed
must have mounted into the air, or evaporated--the scene of his
apotheosis.

With this resolve, I gathered my reins, and rode forward upon the trail,
keeping my eyes fixed upon the hoof-prints.

The line was direct, and I had ridden nearly two hundred yards, when my
horse came to a sudden stop. I looked out forward to discover the cause
of his halting; with that glance vanished my new-born superstitions.

At the distance of some thirty paces, a dark line was seen upon the
prairie, running transversely to the course I was following. It
appeared to be a narrow crack in the plain; but on spurring nearer, it
proved to be a fissure of considerable width--one of those formations
known throughout Spanish America as _barrancas_. The earth yawned, as
though rent by an earthquake; but water had evidently something to do
with the formation of the chasm. It was of nearly equal width at top
and bottom, and its bed was covered with a _debris_ of rocks rounded by
attrition. Its sides were perfectly vertical, and the stratification,
even to the surface-turf, exactly corresponded--thus rendering it
invisible at the distance of but a few paces from its brink. It
appeared to shallow to the right, and no doubt ended not far off in that
direction. Towards the left, on the contrary, I could see that it
became deeper and wider. At the point where I had reached it, its
bottom was nearly twenty feet from the surface of the prairie.

Of course, the disappearance of the white steed was no longer a mystery.
He had made a fearful leap--nearly twenty feet sheer! There was the
torn turf on the brink of the chasm, and the displacement of the loose
stones, where he had bounded into its bed. He had gone to the left--
down the barranca. The abrasion of his hoofs was visible upon the
rocks.

I looked down the defile: he was not to be seen. The barranca turned
off by an angle at no great distance. He had already passed round the
angle, and was out of sight!

It was clear that he had escaped; that to fellow would be of no use;
and, with this reflection, I abandoned all