Her keen eyes
caught this first; my own, I fancy, being busy elsewhere. At once I
slipped out of my saddle and freed the long, heavy rifle from its sling.
I heard her voice, hard now with eagerness. I caught a glance at her
face, brown between her braids. She was a savage woman!
"Quick!" she whispered. "He'll run."
Eager as she, but deliberately, I raised the long barrel to line and
touched the trigger. I heard the thud of the ball against the antelope's
shoulder, and had no doubt that we should pick it up dead, for it
disappeared, apparently end over end, at the moment of the shot.
Springing into the saddle, I raced with my companion to the top of the
ridge. But, lo! there was the antelope two hundred yards away, and going
as fast on three legs as our horses were on four.
"Ride!" she called. "Hurry!" And she spurred off at breakneck speed in
pursuit, myself following, both of us now forgetting poesy, and quite
become creatures of the chase.
The prong-horn, carrying lead as only the prong-horn can, kept ahead of
us, ridge after ridge, farther and farther away, mile after mile, until
our horses began to blow heavily, and our own faces were covered with
perspiration.
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