Лучшие романы Томаса Майна Рида / The Best of Thomas Mayne Reid

Is it from training; or does aВ horse run faster when ridden?

“What if I lose sight of her? In truth, it begins to look queer! It would be an awkward situation for the young lady. Worse than that – there’s danger in it – real danger. If I should lose sight of her, she’d be in trouble to a certainty!”

Thus muttering, Maurice rode on: his eyes now fixed upon the form still flitting away before him; at intervals interrogating, with uneasy glances, the space that separated him from it.

Up to this time he had not thought of hailing the rider of the runaway.

His shouts might have been heard; but no words of warning, or instruction. He had refrained: partly on this account; partly because he was in momentary expectation of overtaking her; and partly because he knew that acts, not words, were wanted to bring the mustang to aВ stand.

All along he had been flattering himself that he would soon be near enough to fling his lazo over the creature’s neck, and control it at discretion.

The chase now entered among copses that thickly studded the plain, fast closing into aВ continuous chapparal. This was aВ new source of uneasiness to the pursuer. The runaway might take to the thicket, or become lost to his view amid the windings of the wood.

The wild mares were already invisible – at intervals. They would soon be out of sight altogether. There seemed no chance of their old associate overtaking them.

“What mattered that? A lady lost on a prairie, or in a chapparal – alone, or in the midst of a manada – either contingency pointed to certain danger.”

A still more startling peril suggested itself to the mind of the mustanger – so startling as to find expression in excited speech.

“By heavens!” he ejaculated, his brow becoming more clouded than it had been from his first entering upon the chase. “If the stallions should chance this way! ’Tis their favourite stamping ground among these mottos.

The spur of the mustanger again drew blood, till its rowels were red; and Castro, galloping at his utmost speed, glanced back upbraidingly over his shoulder.

At this crisis the manada disappeared from, the sight both of the blood-bay and his master; and most probably at the same time from that of the spotted mustang and its rider.