the straggling train was a fortified camp, the horses corralled in the
centre, the dismounted troopers securely posted with their repeating
carbines in the angles of the rude bastions formed by the deserted
wagons, and ready for an attack. The stampede, if such it was, was
stopped.
And yet no cause for it was to be seen! Nothing in earth or sky
suggested a reason for this extraordinary panic, or the marvelous
evolution that suppressed it. The guide, with three men in open order,
rode out and radiated across the empty plain, returning as empty of
result. In an hour the horses were sufficiently calmed and fed, the camp
slowly unwound itself, the teams were set to and were led out of the
circle, and as the rays of the setting sun began to expand fanlike
across the plain the cavalcade moved on. But between them and the
sinking sun, and visible through its last rays, was a faint line of haze
parallel with their track. Yet even this, too, quickly faded away.
Had the guide, however, penetrated half a mile further to the west
he would have come upon the cause of the panic, and a spectacle more
marvelous than that he had just witnessed. For the illimitable plain
with its monotonous prospect was far from being level; a hundred yards
further on he would have slowly and imperceptibly descended into
a depression nearly a mile in width. Here he not only would have
completely lost sight of his own cavalcade, but have come upon another
thrice its length. For here was a trailing line of jog-trotting dusky
shapes, some crouching on dwarf ponies half their size, some trailing
lances, lodge-poles, rifles, women and children after them, all moving
with a monotonous rhythmic motion as marked as the military precision
of the other cavalcade, and always on a parallel line with it. They had
done so all day, keeping touch and distance by stealthy videttes that
crept and crawled along the imperceptible slope towards the unconscious
white men. It was, no doubt, the near proximity of one of those watchers
that had touched the keen scent of the troopers' horses.
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