ears. At the same moment Jud and Ump pulled up
beside me. Perhaps their minds were in the same channel. We listened for
full a minute. Far down in the marsh land I could hear the frogs
chanting their mighty chorus to the stars, and the little screech-owl
whining from some tree-top far up against the hill. I was about to ride
on when Jud caught at the rein and put up his hand. Then I heard the
sound that the horse was listening to, but at the great distance it was
only a sound, a faint, wavering, indefinite echo, coming up from the
far-away bend of the Gauley. The rim of the moon was rising now out of
the under world, and I watched the road trailing away into a deep shadow
by the river. As I watched, I saw something rise out of this gloom and
sweep down the dim road. It passed for a moment through a belt of
moonlight, and I saw that it was a horse ridden by a shadow.

Then we clearly heard long, heavy galloping. Jud dropped my rein and
wrenched the Cardinal around on his haunches. He was not afraid of the
living, but he was afraid of the dead. As the horse reared, Ump caught
the bit under his jaw and, throwing the Bay Eagle against him, wedged
the horse and Jud in between El Mahdi and himself. Ump was neither
afraid of the living nor the dead. He called to me, and I seized the
Cardinal's bit on my side, gripping the iron shank with my fingers
through the rein rings.

Panic was on the giant Jud, and he lifted the horse into the air,
dragging Ump and myself half out of our saddles. Men in their hopeless
egotism have far underestimated the good sense of the horse. The
Cardinal was in no wise frightened. At once, it seemed to me, he
recognised the irresponsibility of his rider. In some moment of the
struggle the bit slipped forward, and the horse clamped his powerful
jaws on it and set the great muscles in his neck to help us hold.

The horses rocked and plunged, but we held them together. The Bay Eagle,
quick-witted as any woman, crowded the Cardinal close, throwing her
weight against his shoulders, and El Mahdi, indifferent, but stubborn as
an ox, held his ground as though he were bolted to the road.

I heard Ump cursing, now Jud for his cowardice, now the ghost for its
infernal riding. "Damn you, fool! Stay an' see it. Stay an' see it." And
then, "Damn Bodkin an' his dead wife! If he rides this way, he stops
here or he goes under to hell."

As for me, I was afraid. Only the swing and jamming of the struggle held
me.