Всадник без головы / The Headless Horseman

At intervals, not very wide apart, the young mistress might have been seen to approach the parapet, and look across the plain, with a glance that seemed to interrogate the horizon of the sky.

Why she did so no one could tell. No one presumed to conjecture, except Cassius Calhoun. He had thoughts upon the subject – thoughts that were torturing him.

When a group of moving forms appeared upon the prairie, emerging from the light of the setting sun – when the spectators pronounced it a drove of horses in charge of some mounted men – the ex-officer of volunteers had a suspicion as to who was conducting that cavalcade.

“Wild horses!” announced the major commandant of Fort Inge, after a short inspection through his pocket telescope. “Some one bringing them in,” he added, a second time raising the glass to his eye. “Oh! I see now – it’s Maurice the mustanger. He appears to be coming direct to your place, Mr Poindexter.”

“I am sure of it,” said the planter’s son.

“I can tell that horseman to be Maurice Gerald.”

The cavalcade came up, Maurice sitting handsomely on his horse, with the spotted mare at the end of his lazo. The mustanger looked splendid, despite his travel-stained habiliments. His journey of over twenty miles had done little to fatigue him.

“What a beautiful creature!” exclaimed several voices, as the captured mustang was led up in front of the house.

“Surely,” said Poindexter, “this must be the animal of which old Zeb Stump has been telling me?”

“Ye-es, Mister Poindexter; the identical creature – a mare,” answered Zeb Stump, making his way towards Maurice with the design of assisting him.

“I shall owe you two hundred dollars for this,” said the planter, addressing himself to Maurice, and pointing to the spotted mare. “I think that was the sum stipulated for by Mr Stump.”

“I was not a party to the stipulation,” replied the mustanger, with a significant but well-intentioned smile.

“I cannot take your money. She is not for sale. You have given me such a generous price for my other captives that I can afford to make a present – what we over in Ireland call a `luckpenny.’ It is our custom there also, when a horse-trade takes place at the house, to give the douceur, not to the purchaser himself, but to one of the fair members of his family.