CHAPTER XXIV.
"Who's here besides foul weather ?" SHAKESPEARE.
Far away stretched the prairie, bounded, ocean-like, only by the horizon; the monotony occasionally relieved by clumps of aged live oaks, which tossed their branches to and fro in summer breezes and in wintry blasts, and lent a mournful cadence to the howlings of the tempest.

Now and then a herd of deer, lifting proudly their antlered heads, seemed to scorn danger from the hand of man, as they roamed so freely over the wide, desolate waste which possessed no visible limits.

And groups of cattle, starting at the slightest sound, tossed their horns in defiance, and browsed along the mosquit, in many places so luxuriant as well-nigh to conceal their forms.

The day had been unusually warm for January, and the sun beamed down with a sickening intensity which made the blood tingle in the veins.

Toward noon the sky assumed a dull, leaden cast, and light flakes of cloud, like harbingers of evil, scudded ominously overhead.