“For all one could tell, there might be lions and tigers and camels and gazelles out there.”  She gestured vaguely toward the wide horizon.  “It is the desert.”

We rode on for a time, silent, and I began to hum to myself the rest of the words of an old song, then commonly heard: 

  “O come with me, and be my love,
  For thee the jungle’s depths I’ll rove. 
  I’ll chase the antelope over the plain,
  And the tiger’s cub I’ll bind with a chain,
  And the wild gazelle with the silvery feet
  I’ll give to thee for a playmate sweet.”

“Poets,” said I, “can very well sing about such things, but perhaps they could not practice all they sing.  They always—­”

“Hush!” she whispered, drawing her horse gently down to a walk, and finally to a pause.  “Look!  Over there is one of the wild gazelles.”

I followed the direction of her eyes and saw, peering curiously down at us from beyond the top of a little ridge, something like a hundred yards away, the head, horns, and neck of a prong-horn buck, standing facing us, and seeming not much thicker than a knife blade.  Her keen eyes caught this first; my own, I fancy, being busy elsewhere.  At once I slipped out of my saddle and freed the long, heavy rifle from its sling.  I heard her voice, hard now with eagerness.  I caught a glance at her face, brown between her braids.  She was a savage woman!

“Quick!” she whispered.  “He’ll run.”

Eager as she, but deliberately, I raised the long barrel to line and touched the trigger.  I heard the thud of the ball against the antelope’s shoulder, and had no doubt that we should pick it up dead, for it disappeared, apparently end over end, at the moment of the shot.  Springing into the saddle, I raced with my companion to the top of the ridge.  But, lo! there was the antelope two hundred yards away, and going as fast on three legs as our horses were on four.

“Ride!” she called.  “Hurry!” And she spurred off at breakneck speed in pursuit, myself following, both of us now forgetting poesy, and quite become creatures of the chase.

The prong-horn, carrying lead as only the prong-horn can, kept ahead of us, ridge after ridge, farther and farther away, mile after mile, until our horses began to blow heavily, and our own faces were covered with perspiration.  Still we raced on, neck and neck, she riding with hands low and weight slightly forward, workmanlike as a jockey.  Now and again I heard her call out in eagerness.

We should perhaps have continued this chase until one or the other of the horses dropped, but now her horse picked up a pebble and went somewhat lame.  She pulled up and told me to ride on alone.  After a pause I slowly approached the top of the next ridge, and there, as I more than half suspected, I saw the antelope lying down, its head turned back.  Eager to finish the chase, I sprang down, carelessly neglecting to throw the bridle rein over my horse’s head.  Dropping flat, I rested on my elbow and fired carefully once more.  This time the animal rolled over dead.  I rose, throwing up my hat with a shout of victory, and I heard, shrilling to me across the distance, her own cry of exultation, as that of some native woman applauding a red hunter.