S8            GOLD MINES OF THE PECOS AND THE GILA.
almost endangered his own life by his mole-eyed and headlong^ fury. I was more than half consoled as I saw him spitting the, red foam from his lips. But this was nothing to the real peril he had exposed all our lives to. I felt no sort of pity for him as I ¦ saw him sink pale and frightened on the grass—for this fierce animal, though while the glow was on him he was a very fiend in battle, yet shrank with deeper appalment from death in any other form, than even timid men would have done.
The Texan was blowing like a porpoise—swearing now. at his own carelessness and mine in forgetting the caps and spoiling his fun ; and then, grinding his teeth, and stamping about in impotent rage, as he saw a tall warrior mounted upon his horse, and dashing him to and fro on the ridge, seemingly for our benefit, and to try his gait. I thought he would go into a fit. As the Indiart galloped off, he shook his clenched fist, and howled imprecations and threats after him.
The Colonel recovered his spirits as the blood ceased to rise, and springing to his feet as the pleasant conviction came to his relief, that he was not born to die so unmartial a death, insisted that we should return instantly and try if we couldn't raise horses at the Mexican Ranchos above us, to pursue the Indians. " They have carried off all that were loose on the prairie," said he, " but the Mexicans generally keep their best riding horses inside -the picketing, and we were fools for not keeping ours there !"
I saw the torturing walk was not to be avoided by simply dreading it, so I girded up my loins and off we started—the Colonel rallying us all the way most unmercifully for our ridiculous verdancy, in coming off without our ammunition. Had there been any buoyancy left in me, I might have retorted emphatically the charge of verdancy upon his preposterous helter-skelter sally ;—but my poor, suffering feet, now that a revulsion of excitement had come on, engrossed all my attention.
Just think of walking a half-mile with naked feet over pinpoints, and you may form some faint idea of how entire the abstraction and pre-occupation of my wits must have been—though, strictly speaking, not gone " a wool gathering," it was much more sprightly employment, that—marking the sharp pang as each' particular thorn pierced to the quick.