describe what followed is beyond the power of the pen. No eye beheld the spectacle: for none dared look upon it. Even had this been possible, nothing could have been seen. In five minutes after the muffling of the mules, the train was enveloped in worse than Cimmerian darkness.
The opening scene can alone be depicted: for that only was observed by the travellers. One of the sable columns, moving in the advance, broke as it came in collision with the waggon-tilts. Down came a shower of black dust, as if the sky had commenced raining gunpowder! It was a foretaste of what was to follow.
There was a short interval of open atmosphere — hot as the inside of an oven. Then succeeded puffs, and whirling gusts, of wind — cold as if projected from caves of ice, and accompanied by a noise as though all the trumpets of Aeolus were announcing the advent of the Storm-King!
In another instant the norther was around them; and the waggon train, halted on a subtropical plain, was enveloped in an atmosphere, akin to that which congeals the icebergs of the Arctic Ocean!
Nothing more was seen — nothing heard, save the whistling of the wind, or its hoarse roaring, as it thundered against the tilts of the waggons. The mules having instinctively turned stern towards it, stood silent in their traces; and the voices of the travellers, in solemn converse inside, could not be distinguished amid the howling of the hurricane.
Every aperture had been closed: for it was soon discovered, that to show a face from under the sheltering canvas was to court suffocation. The air was surcharged with ashes, lifted aloft from the burnt plain, and reduced, by the whirling of the wind, to an impalpable but poisonous powder.
For over an hour did the atmosphere carry this cinereous cloud; during which period lasted the imprisonment of the travellers.
At length a voice, speaking close by the curtains of the carriole, announced their release.
“You can come forth!” said the stranger, the crape scarf thrown back above the brim of his hat. “You will still have the storm to contend against. It will last to the end of your journey; and, perhaps, for three days longer. But you have nothing further to fear. The ashes are all swept off. They’ve gone before you; and you’re not likely to overtake them this side the Rio Grande.”
“Sir!” said the planter, hastily descending the steps of the carriage, “we have to thank you for — for — ”
“Our lives, father!” cried Henry, supplying the proper words. “I hope, sir, you will favour us with your name?”
“Maurice Gerald!” returned the stranger; “though, at the Fort, you will find me better known as Maurice the mustanger.”
“A mustanger!” scornfully muttered Calhoun, but only loud enough to be heard by Louise.
“Only a mustanger!” reflected the aristocratic Poindexter, the fervour of his gratitude becoming sensibly chilled.
“For guide, you will no longer need either myself, or my lazo,” said the hunter of wild horses. “The cypress is in sight: keep straight towards it. After crossing, you will see the flag over the Fort. You may yet reach your journey’s end before night. I have no time to tarry; and must say adieu.”
Satan himself, astride a Tartarean steed, could not have looked more like the devil than did Maurice the Mustanger, as he separated for the second time from the planter and his party. But neither his ashy envelope, nor the announcement of his humble calling, did aught to damage him in the estimation of one, whose thoughts were already predisposed in his favour — Louise Poindexter.
On hearing him declare his name — by presumption already known to her — she but more tenderly cherished the bit of cardboard, chafing against her snow-white bosom; at the same time muttering in soft pensive soliloquy, heard only by herself: —
“Maurice the mustanger! despite your sooty covering — despite your modest pretence — you have touched the heart of a Creole maiden. Mon Dieu — mon Dieu! He is too like Lucifer for me to despise him!”
Chapter Five. The Home of the Horse-Hunter
Where the Rio de Nueces (River of Nuts) collects its waters from a hundred tributary streams — lining the map like the limbs of a grand genealogical tree — you may look upon a land of surpassing fairness. Its surface is “rolling prairie,” interspersed with clumps of post-oak and pecân, here and there along the banks of the watercourses uniting into continuous groves.
In some places these timbered tracts assume the aspect of the true chapparal — a thicket, rather than a forest — its principal growth being various kinds of acacia, associated with copaiva and creosote trees, with wild aloes, with eccentric shapes of cereus, cactus, and arborescent yucca.
These spinous forms of vegetation, though repulsive to the eye of the agriculturist — as proving the utter sterility of the soil — present an attractive aspect to the botanist, or the lover of Nature; especially when the cereus unfolds its huge wax-like blossoms, or the Fouquiera splendens overtops the surrounding shrubbery with its spike of resplendent flowers, like a red flag hanging unfolded along its staff.
The whole region, however, is not of this character. There are stretches of greater fertility; where a black calcareous earth gives nourishment to trees of taller growth, and more luxuriant foliage. The “wild China” — a true sapindal — the pecân, the elm, the hackberry, and the oak of several species — with here and there a cypress or Cottonwood — form the components of many a sylvan scene, which, from the blending of their leaves of various shades of green, and the ever changing contour of their clumps, deserves to be denominated fair.
The streams of this region are of crystal purity — their waters tinted only by the reflection of sapphire skies. Its sun, moon, and stars are scarcely ever concealed behind a cloud. The demon of disease has not found his way into this salubrious spot: no epidemic can dwell within its borders.
Despite these advantages, civilised man has not yet made it his home. Its paths are trodden only by the red-skinned rovers of the prairie — Lipano or Comanche — and these only when mounted, and upon the maraud towards the settlements of the Lower Nueces, or Leona.
It may be on this account — though it would almost seem as if they were actuated by a love of the beautiful and picturesque — that the true children of Nature, the wild animals, have selected this spot as their favourite habitat and home. In no part of Texas does the stag bound up so often before you; and nowhere is the timid antelope so frequently seen. The rabbit, and his gigantic cousin, the mule-rabbit, are scarcely ever out of sight; while the polecat, the opossum, and the curious peccary, are encountered at frequent intervals.
Birds, too, of beautiful forms and colours, enliven the landscape. The quail whirrs up from the path; the king vulture wheels in the ambient air; the wild turkey, of gigantic stature, suns his resplendent gorget by the side of the pecân copse, and the singular tailor-bird — known among the rude Rangers as the “bird of paradise” — flouts his long scissors-like tail among the feathery fronds of the acacia.
Beautiful butterflies spread their wide wings in flapping flight; or, perched upon some gay corolla, look as if they formed part of the flower. Huge bees (Meliponae), clad in velvet liveries, buzz amid the blossoming bushes, disputing possession with hawkmoths and humming-birds not much larger than themselves.
They are not all innocent, the denizens of this lovely land. Here the rattlesnake attains to larger dimensions than in any other part of North America, and shares the covert with the more dangerous moccasin. Here, too, the tarantula inflicts
