A Lilliputian Forest.

Guiding their course by the stars the fugitives continue on—no longer going in a run, nor even in a very rapid walk. Despite the resolution with which he endeavours to nerve himself, the wounded man is still too weak to make much progress, and he advances but laggingly. His companion does not urge him to quicken his pace. The experienced prairie man knows it will be better to go slowly than get broken down by straining forward too eagerly. There is no sign or sound of Indian, either behind or before them. The stillness of the desert is around them—its silence only interrupted by the “whip-whip” of the night-hawk’s wings, and at intervals its soft note answering to the shriller cry of the kid-deer plover that rises screaming before their feet. These, with the constant skirr of the ground-crickets and the prolonged whine of the coyote, are the only sounds that salute them as they glide on—none of which are of a kind to cause alarm.

There appears no great reason for making haste now. They have all the night before them, and, ere daylight can discover them, they will be sure to find some place of concealment.

The ground is favourable to pedestrianism in the darkness. The surface, hard-baked by the sun, is level as a set flagstone, and in most places so smooth that a carriage could run upon it as on the drive of a park. Well for them it is so. Had the path been a rugged one the wounded man would not go far before giving out. Even as it is, the toil soon begins to tell on his wasted strength. His veins are almost emptied of blood.

Nor do they proceed a very great distance before again coming to a halt; though far enough to feel sure that, standing erect, they cannot be descried by any one who may have ascended the cliff at the place where they took departure from it.

But they have also reached that which offers them a chance of concealment—in short, a forest. It is a forest not discernible at more than a mile’s distance, for the trees that compose it are “shin oaks,” the tallest rising to the height of only eighteen inches above the surface of the ground. Eighteen inches is enough to conceal the body of a man lying in a prostrate attitude; and as the Lilliputian trees grow thick as jimson weeds, the cover will be a secure one. Unless the pursuers should stray so close as to tread upon them, there will be no danger of their being seen. Further reflection has by this time satisfied them that the Indians are not upon the upper plain. It is not likely, after the pains they had taken to smoke them in the cave and afterwards shut them up. Besides, the distribution of the spoils would be an attraction sure to draw them back to the waggons, and speedily.

Becoming satisfied that there is no longer a likelihood of their being pursued across the plain, Wilder proposes that they again make stop; this time to obtain sleep, which in their anxiety during their previous spell of rest they did not attempt. He makes the proposal out of consideration for his comrade, who for some time, as he can see, has evidently been hard pressed to keep up with him.

“We kin lie by till sun-up,” says Walt; “an’ then, if we see any sign o’ pursoot, kin stay hyar till the sun goes down agin. These shin oaks will gie us kiver enuf. Squatted, there’ll be no chance o’ thar diskiverin’ us, unless they stumble right atop o’ us.” His companion is not in the mood to make objection, and the two lay themselves along the earth. The miniature forest not only gives them the protection of a screen but a soft bed, as the tiny trunks and leaf-laden branches become pressed down beneath their bodies.

They remain awake only long enough to give Hamersley’s wound such dressing as the circumstances permit, and then both sink into slumber.

With the young prairie merchant it is neither deep nor profound. Horrid visions float before his rapt senses—scenes of red carnage—causing him ever and anon to awake with a start, once or twice with a cry that wakes his companion.

Otherwise Walt Wilder would have slept as soundly as if reposing on the couch of a log cabin a thousand miles removed from any scene of danger. It is no new thing for him to go to sleep with the yell of savages sounding in his ears. For a period of over twenty years he has daily, as nightly, stretched his huge form along mountain slope or level prairie, and often with far more danger of having his “hair raised” before rising erect again. For ten years he belonged to the “Texas Rangers”—that strange organisation that has existed ever since Stephen Austin first planted his colony in the land of the “Lone Star.” If on this night the ex-Ranger is more than usually restless, it is from anxiety about his comrade, coupled with............