In the present case, he knew that his life or death depended solely on the caprice of the Indians, and hence he was quite reckless. Lanzi was a cold, positive, and methodical man, who never acted till he had previously fully weighed the chances of success or failure. Under present circumstances, the half-breed ran no risk, for he knew that he was condemned by the Indians beforehand; if his plan succeeded, he might possibly escape; if not, he could die, but as a brave borderer should do, taking with him into the tomb a considerable number of his implacable foes. His resolution once formed, it was carried out with the coolness we have described, and, thanks to his presence of mind, he had found time to leap on his horse and fly. Still, all was not finished yet, and the galloping the half-breed heard behind him disturbed him greatly, by proving to him that his plan had not succeeded so well as he hoped, and that one of his enemies, at any rate, had escaped, and was on his track. The half-breed redoubled his speed; he made his horse swerve from the straight line incessantly, in order to throw out his obstinate pursuer; but everything was of no avail, and still he heard him galloping behind him. However brave a man may be, however great the energy is with which heaven has endowed him, nothing affects his courage so much as to feel himself menaced in the darkness by an invisible and unassailable foe; the obscurity of night, the silence that broods over the desert, the trees which in his mad race defile on his right and left like a legion of gloomy and threatening phantoms--all this combines to heighten the terrors of the hapless man who dashes along under the impression of a nightmare which is the more horrible, because he is conscious of danger, and knows not how to exorcise it. Lanzi, with frowning brow, quivering lips, and forehead bathed with cold perspiration, rode thus for several hours across country, bowed over his horse's neck, following no settled course, but constantly pursued by the dry, sharp sound of the horse galloping after him. Strangely enough, since he first heard this gallop, it had not appeared to draw any nearer; it might be thought that the strange horseman, satisfied with following the trail of the man he pursued, was not desirous of catching him up. By degrees the half-breed's excitement calmed: the cold night air restored a little order to his ideas, his coolness returned, and with it the necessary clearness to judge of his position soundly. Lanzi was ashamed of this puerile terror, so unworthy of a man like himself, which had for so long, through a selfish feeling, caused him to forget the sacred duty he had taken on himself, of protecting and defending at the peril of his life his friend's daughter. At this thought, which struck him like a thunder-bolt, a burning blush flushed his face, a flash darted from his eyes, and he stopped his horse short, resolved on finishing once for all with his pursuer.