pag242iloTHE PHANTOM HORSEMAN
pag242ilo
THE PHANTOM HORSEMAN
Each time he looked back his alarm rose higher, for the Thing was closer whenever he looked. At last his alarm grew to such proportions that he ceased to look back, but addressed himself entirely to the work of urging his horse to higher speed. Presently he heard quick, fierce snorts on his right, and his eye caught sight of the Thing. Its course was parallel with his own, and it was not more than twenty yards away.
He saw enough for his alarm to rise to the height of terror. He saw something that had the head and feet of a black horse, but the body was wanting. No! There was a body, and a rider, but the rider wore a long, pale gray robe, and he was headless! If this was the Black Demon that the young man had seen in this pasture on a former occasion, he was now more terrible than ever, for he was guided by a headless rider!
The young man would have checked his horse,but the effort was in vain. The horse had eyes. He also had seen the Thing, and had swerved away from it, but he was too frightened to pay any attention to bit or rein. The Black Thing was going faster than the frightened horse, and it soon drew away, the pale gray robe of the rider fluttering about like a fierce signal of warning. The young man's horse was soon under control, and in a few minutes he came up with his companions. He found them huddled together like so many sheep, this manœuvre having been instinctively made by the horses. The dogs, too, were acting queerly.
The men appeared to be somewhat surprised to see their companion come galloping up to them. After riding away from the young man who had taken it upon himself to leave the double gates open, the huntsmen had concluded to wait for him when they came to the bars that opened on the public road. But the gallop of their horses had subsided into a walk when they were still some distance from that point. They were conversing about the merits of their favorite dogs when suddenly they heard from behind them the sound of a galloping horse. They saw, as theyoung man had seen, a dark, moving mass gradually assume the shape of a black horse, with a headless rider wearing a long, pale gray robe. The apparition was somewhat farther from them when it passed than it had been from their companion, whom, in a spirit of mischief, they had deserted; but the Black Thing threatened to come closer, for when it had gone beyond them it changed its course, described a half circle, and vanished from sight on the side of the pasture opposite to that on which it had first appeared.
"What do you think now?" said George Gossett, speaking in a low tone to the gentleman who had been inclined to grow merry when the former experience of the patrollers was mentioned.
"What do I think? Why, I think it's right queer if the chap we left at the double gates isn't trying to get even with us by riding around like a wild Indian and waving his saddle blanket," replied the doubting gentleman.
"Why, man, he's riding a gray horse!" one of the others explained.
This put another face on the matter, and the gentleman made no further remark. In fact, beforeanything else could be said, the young man in question came galloping up.
"Did you fellows see It?" he inquired. But he had no need to inquire. Their attitude and the uneasy movements of their horses showed unmistakably that they had seen It. "Which way did It go?" was the next question. There was no need to make reply. The direction in which the huntsmen glanced every second showed unmistakably which way It went.
"Let's get out of here," said the young man in the next breath. And there was no need to make even this simple proposition, for by common consent, and as by one impulse, horses and men started for the bars at a rapid trot. When the bars were taken down they were not left down. Each one was put carefully back in its proper place, for though this was but a slight barrier to interpose between themselves and the terrible Black Thing, yet it was something.
Once in the road they felt more at ease—not because they were safer there, but because it seemed that the night had suddenly trailed its dark mantle westward.
"Did you notice," said the young man whowas first to see the apparition, "that the Thing that was riding the Thing had no head?"
"It certainly had that appearance," replied the doubtful gentleman, "but"—
"No 'buts' nor 'ifs' about it," insisted the young man. "It came so close to me that I could 'a' put my hand on it, and I noticed particular that the Thing on the back of the Thing didn't have no sign of head, no more than my big toe has got a head."
The exaggeration of the young man was unblushing. If the Thing had come within ten yards of him he would have fallen from his horse in a fit.
"And what was you doing all that time?" George Gossett inquired. His tone implied a grave doubt.
"Trying to get away from that part of the country," replied the other frankly. "It was the same hoss that got after us that night," the young man continued. "I knowed it by the blaze in his eyes and the red on the inside of his nose. Why, it looked to me like you could 'a' lit a cigar by holding it close to his eyes."
"I know how skeery you are," said GeorgeGossett disdainfully, "and I don't believe you took time to notice all these things."
"Skeer'd!" exclaimed the other; "why, that ain't no name for it—no name at all. But it was my mind that was skeered and not my eyes. You can't help seeing what's right at you, can you?"
This frankness took the edge off any criticism that George Gossett might have made, seeing which the young man gave loose reins to his invention, which was happy enough in this instance to fit the suggestions that fear had made a place for in the minds of his companions.
But it was all the simplest thing in the world. The apparition the fox hunters saw was Aaron and the Black Stallion. The Son of Ben Ali had decided that the interval between the first faint glimpse of dawn and daylight was the most convenient time to give Timoleon his exercise, and to fit him in some sort for the vigorous work he was expected to do some day on the race track. Aaron had hit upon that particular morning to begin the training of the Black Stallion, and had selected the pasture as the training-ground. It was purely a coincidence that he rode in at thedouble gates behind the fox hunters, but it was such a queer one that Little Crotchet laughed until the tears came into his eyes when he heard about it.
Aaron's version of the incident was so entirely different from that of the fox hunters that those who heard both would be unable to recognize in them an account of the same affair from different points of view. As Aaron saw it and knew it, the incident was as simple as it could be. As he was riding the horse along the lane leading to the double gates (having left Rambler behind at the stable), Timoleon gave a snort and lifted his head higher than usual.
"Son of Ben Ali," he said, "I smell strange men and strange horses. Their scent is hot on the air. Some of them are the men that went tumbling about the pasture the night you bade me play with them."
"Not at this hour, Grandson of Abdallah," replied Aaron.
"I am not smelling the hour, Son of Ben Ali, but the men. If we find them, shall I use my teeth?"
"We'll not see the men, Grandson of Abdallah. This is not their hour."
"But if we find them, Son of Ben Ali?" persisted the Black Stallion.
"Save your teeth for your corn, Grandson of Abdallah," was the response.
As they entered the double gates, which Aaron was surprised to find open, Timoleon gave a series of fierce snorts, which was the same as saying, "What did I tell you, Son of Ben Ali? Look yonder! There is one; the others are galloping farther on."
"I am wrong and you are right, Grandson of Abdallah."
As much for the horse's comfort as his own, Aaron had folded a large blanket he found hanging in the stable, and was using it in place of a saddle. He lifted himself back toward Timoleon's croup, seized the blanket with his left hand, and, holding it by one corner, shook out the folds. He had no intention whatever of frightening any one, his sole idea being to use the blanket to screen himself from observation. He would have turned back, but in the event of pursuit he would be compelled to lead his pursuers into the Abercrombie place, or along the public road, and either course would have been embarrassing. If he was to be pursued at all, he preferred to take the risk of capture in the wide pasture. As a last resort he could slip from Timoleon's back and give the horse the word to use both teeth and heels.