of the prairie--from
hieroglyphics to me unintelligible, but to him more easily interpreted
than a page of the printed book.

I knew that what he was saying was true. The steed had galloped after a
drove of wild horses; he had overtaken them; and at the point where we
now were, had been passing along in their midst!

Dark thoughts came crowding into my mind at this discovery--another
shadow across my heart. I perceived at once a new situation of peril
for my betrothed--new, and strange, and awful.

I saw her in the midst of a troop of neighing wild-horses--stallions
with fiery eyes and red steaming nostrils--these perhaps angry at the
white steed, and jealous of his approach to the _manada_; in mad rage
rushing upon him with open mouth and yellow glistening teeth; rearing
around and above him, and striking down with deadly desperate hoof--Oh,
it was a horrid apprehension, a fearful fancy!

Yet, fearful as it was, it proved to be the exact shadow of a reality.
As the mirage refracts distant objects upon the retina of the eye, so
some spiritual mirage must have thrown upon my mind the image of things
that were real. Not distant, though then unseen--not distant was the
real.

Rapidly I ascended another swell of the prairie, and from its crest
beheld almost the counterpart of the terrible scene that my imagination
had conjured up!

Was it a dream? was it still fancy that was cheating my eyes? No; there
was the wild-horse drove; there the rearing, screaming stallions; there
the white steed in their midst--he too rearing erect--there upon his
back--

"O God! look down in mercy--save her! save her!"

CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE.

SCATTERING THE WILD STALLIONS.

Such rude appeal was wrung from my lips by the dread spectacle on which
my eyes rested.

I scarcely waited the echo of my words; I waited not the counsel of my
comrades; but, plunging deeply the spur, galloped down the hill in the
direction of the drove.

There was no method observed--no attempt to keep under cover. There was
no time either for caution or concealment. I acted under instantaneous
impulse, and with but one thought--to charge forward, scatter the
stallions, and, if yet in time, save her from those hurling heels and
fierce glittering teeth.

_If yet in time_--ay, such provisory parenthesis was in my mind at the
moment. But I drew hope from observing that the steed kept a ring
cleared around him: his assailants only threatened at a distan