There was no mistaking the rising anger of his voice. The cowed
group rose in a frightened way and disappeared one by one silently
through the labyrinth. Pereo waited until the last had vanished,
and then, cramming his stiff sombrero over his eyes with an
ejaculation, brushed his way through the shrubbery in the direction
of the stables.

Later, when the full glory of the midnight moon had put out every
straggling light in the great house; when the long veranda slept in
massive bars of shadow, and even the tradewinds were hushed to
repose, Pereo silently issued from the stable-yard in vaquero's
dress, mounted and caparisoned. Picking his way cautiously along
the turf-bordered edge of the gravel path, he noiselessly reached a
gate that led to the lane. Walking his spirited mustang with
difficulty until the house had at last disappeared in the
intervening foliage, he turned with an easy canter into a border
bridle-path that seemed to lead to the canada. In a quarter of an
hour he had reached a low amphitheatre of meadows, shut in a half
circle of grassy treeless hills.

Here, putting spurs to his horse, he entered upon a singular
exercise. Twice he made a circuit of the meadow at a wild gallop,
with flying serape and loosened rein, and twice returned. The
third time his speed increased; the ground seemed to stream from
under him; in the distance the limbs of his steed became invisible
in their furious action, and, lying low forward on his mustang's
neck, man and horse passed like an arrowy bolt around the circle.
Then something like a light ring of smoke up-curved from the saddle
before him, and, slowly uncoiling itself in mid air, dropped gently