while the blood burst from its mouth and nostrils. Dick could hear the
shout of triumph uttered by his pursuers.

"My poor, poor horse!" he exclaimed, in a tone of the deepest
commiseration, while he stooped and stroked its foam-studded neck.

The dying steed raised his head for a moment, it almost seemed as if to
acknowledge the tones of affection, then it sank down with a gurgling
groan.

Dick sprang up, for the Indians were now upon him, and bounded like an
antelope into the thickest of the shrubbery, which was nowhere thick
enough, however, to prevent the Indians following. Still, it
sufficiently retarded them to render the chase a more equal one than
could have been expected. In a few minutes Dick gained a strip of open
ground beyond, and found himself on the bank of a broad river, whose
evidently deep waters rushed impetuously along their unobstructed
channel. The bank at the spot where he reached it was a sheer precipice
of between thirty and forty feet high. Glancing up and down the river
he retreated a few paces, turned round and shook his clenched fist at
the savages, accompanying the action with a shout of defiance, and then
running to the edge of the bank, sprang far out into the boiling flood
and sank.

The Indians pulled up on reaching the spot. There was no possibility of
galloping down the wood-encumbered banks after the fugitive, but quick
as thought each Red-man leaped to the ground, and fitting an arrow to
his bow, awaited Dick's re-appearance with eager gaze.

Young though he was, and unskilled in such wild warfare, Dick knew well
enough what sort of reception he would meet with on coming to the
surface, so he kept under water as long as he could, and struck out as
vigorously as the care of his rifle would permit. At last he rose for a
few seconds, and immediately half a dozen arrows whizzed through the
air; but most of them fell short; only one passed close to his cheek,
and went with a "whip" into the river. He immediately sank again, and
the next time he rose to breathe he was far beyond the reach of his
Indian enemies.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

ESCAPE FROM INDIANS--A DISCOVERY--ALONE IN THE DESERT.

Dick Varley had spent so much of his boyhood in sporting about among the
waters of the rivers and lakes near which he had been reared, and
especially during the last two years had spent so much of his leisure
time in rolling and diving with his dog Crusoe in the lake of the
Mustang Va