The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas

The stag of Texas, reclining in midnight lair, is startled from his
slumbers by the hoof stroke of a horse.

He does not forsake his covert, nor yet rise to his feet. His domain is
shared by the wild steeds of the savannah, given to nocturnal straying.
He only up rears his head and, with antlers overtopping the tall grass,
listens for a repetition of the sound.

Again is the hoof stroke heard, but with altered intonation. There is a
ring of metal the clinking of steel against stone.

The sound, significant to the ear of the stag, causes a quick change in
his air and attitude. Springing clear of his couch, and bounding a score
of yards across the prairie, he pauses to look back upon the disturber
of his dreams.

In the clear moonlight of a southern sky, he recognizes the most
ruthless of his enemies: man. One is approaching upon horseback.

Yielding to instinctive dread, he is about to resume his flight when
something in the appearance of the horseman some unnatural seeming holds
him transfixed to the spot.

With haunches in quivering contact with the sward, and frontlet faced to
the rear, he continues to gaze his large brown eyes straining upon the
intruder in a mingled expression of fear and bewilderment.

What has challenged the saga to such protracted scrutiny?

The horse is perfect in all its parts a splendid steed, saddled,
bridled, and otherwise completely caparisoned. In it appears nothing
amiss, nothing to produce either wonder or alarm. But the rider? Ah!
About him there is something to cause both something weird something
wonting!

By heavens! it is the head!

Even the unreasoning animal can perceive this and, after gazing a moment
with wildered eyes wondering what abnormal monster thus mocks its
corvine intelligence terror stricken it continues its retreat nor again
pauses, till it has plunged through the waters of the Leona, and placed
the current of the stream between itself and the ghastly intruder.

Heedless of the affrighted deer either of its presence, or precipitate
flight the Headless Horseman rides on.

He too, is going in the direction of the river. Unlike the stag, he does
not seem pressed for time but advances in a slow, tranquil pace so
silent as to seem ceremonious.

Apparently absorbed in solemn thought, he gives free rein to his steed
permitting the animal, at intervals, to snatch a mouthful of the herbage
growing by the way. Nor does he, by voice or gesture, urge it
impatiently onward, when the howl bark of the prairie wolf causes it to
fling its head on high, and stand snorting in its tracks.

He appears to be under the influence of some all absorbing emotion, from
which no common incident can awake him. There is no speech not a whisper
to betray its nature. The startled stag, his own horse, the wolf, and
the midnight moon, are the sole witnesses of his silent abstraction.

His shoulders shrouded under a serapé, one edge of which, flirted up by
the wind, displays a portion of his figure his limbs encased in "water
guards" of jaguar skin thus sufficiently sheltered against the dews of
the night, or the showers of a tropical sky, he rides on silent as the
stars shining above, unconcerned as the cicada that chirrups in the
grass beneath, or the prairie breeze playing with the drapery of ms
dress.

Something at length appears to rouse from his reverie, and stimulate mm
to greater speed his steed, at the same time. The latter, tossing up its
head, gives utterance to a joyous neigh and, with outstretched neck, and
spread nostrils, advances in a gait gradually increasing to a canter.
The proximity of the river explains the altered pace.

The horse halts not again, till the crystal current is surging against
his flanks, and the legs of his rider are submersed knee deep under the
surface.

The animal eagerly assuages its thirst crosses to the opposite side and,
with vigorous stride, ascends the sloping bank.

Upon the crest occurs a pause as if the rider tarried till his steed
should shake the water from its flanks. There is a rattling of saddle
flaps, and stirrup leathers, resembling thunder, amidst a cloud of
vapor, white as the spray of a cataract.

Out of this self constituted nimbus, the Headless Horseman emerges and
moves onward, as before.

Apparently pricked by the spur, and guided by the rein, of his rider,
the horse no longer strays from the track but steps briskly forward, as
if upon a path already trodden.

A treeless savannah stretches before salvaged by the sky. Outlined
against the azure is seen the imperfect centaurean shape gradually
dissolving in the distance, till it becomes lost to vi