Where the steed had
gone, surely I could have followed. Now he was gone I knew not
whither--lost--his trail lost--all lost!

To recover the trace of him, I made several casts across the thicket. I
rode first in one direction, then in another, but all to no purpose. I
could find neither hoof-track nor broken branch.

I next bethought me of returning to the open prairie, there retaking the
trail, and following it thence. This was clearly the wisest,--in fact,
the only course in which there was reason. I should easily recover the
trail, at the point where the horse had entered the chapparal, and
thence I might follow it without difficulty.

I turned my horse round, and headed him in the direction of the
prairie--or rather in what I supposed to be the direction--for this too
had become conjecture.

It was not till I had ridden for a half-hour--for more than a mile
through glade and bush--not till I had ridden nearly twice as far in the
opposite direction--and then to right, and then to left--that I pulled
up my broken horse, dropped the rein upon his withers, and sat bent in
my saddle under the full conviction that I too was lost.

Lost in the chapparal--that parched and hideous jungle, where every
plant that carries a thorn seemed to have place. Around grew _acacias,
mimosas, gleditschias, robinias, algarobias_--all the thorny legumes of
the world; above towered the splendid _fouquiera_ with spinous stem;
there nourished the "tornillo" (_prosopis glandulosa_), with its twisted
beans; there the "junco" (_koeblerinia_), whose very leaves are thorns.
There saw I spear-pointed yuccas and clawed bromelias (_agave_ and
_dasylirion_); there, too, the universal cactacese (_opuntia,
mamillaria, cereus_, and _echinocactus_); even the very grass was
thorny--for it was a species of the "mezquite-grass," whose knotted
culms are armed with sharp spurs!

Through this horrid thicket I had not passed unscathed; my garments were
already torn, my limbs were bleeding.

_My_ limbs--and hers?

Of hers alone was I thinking: those fair-proportioned members--those
softly-rounded arms--that smooth, delicate skin--bosom and shoulders
bare--the thorn--the scratch--the tear. Oh! it was agony to think!

By action alone might I hope to still my emotions; and once more rousing
myself from the lethargy of painful thought, I urged my steed onward
through the bushes.

CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN.

ENCOUNTER WITH JAVALL.

I had no mark t