"There's a bunch a-running," called Bob from across the frightened herd. "If they hit us, give Sunfish his head, he's been there before--and keep on the outside!"Thurston yelled "All right!" but the pounding roar of the stampede drowned his voice. A whirlwind of frenzied steers bore down upon him--twenty-five hundred Panhandle two-year-olds, though he did not know it then. his mind was all a daze, with one sentence zigzagging through it like the lightning over his head, "Give Sunfish his head, and keep on the outside!'
That was what saved him, for he had the sense to obey. After a few minutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears and the crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs close upon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as it were, while the tumult swept by.
Presently he was galloping along behind and wondering dully how he got there, though perhaps Sunfish knew well enough.
In his story of the West--the one that had failed to be convincing--he had in his ignorance described a stampede, and it had not been in the least like this one. He blushed at the memory, and wondered if he should ever again feel qualified to write of these things.
Great drops of rain pounded him on the back as he rode-- chill drops, that went to the skin. He thought of his new canary-colored slicker in the bed-tent, and before he knew it swore just as any of the other men would have done under similar provocation; it was the first real, able-bodied oath he had ever uttered. He was becoming assimilated with the raw conditions of life.
He heard a man's voice calling to him, and distinguished the dim shape of a rider close by. He shouted that password of the range, "Hello!""What outfit is this?" the man cried again.
"The Lazy Eight!" snapped Thurston, sure that the other had come with the stampede. Then, feeling the anger of temporary authority, "What in hell are you up to, letting your cattle run?" If Park could have heard him say that for Reeve-Howard!
Down the long length of the valley they swept, gathering to themselves other herds and other riders as incensed as were themselves. It is not pretty work, nor amusing, to gallop madly in the wake of a stampede at night, keeping up the stragglers and taking the chance of a broken neck with the rain to make matters worse.
Bob MacGregor sought Thurston with much shouting, and having found him they rode side by side. And always the thunder boomed overhead, and by the lightning flashes they glimpsed the turbulent sea of cattle fleeing, they knew not where or why, with blind fear crowding their heels.
The noise of it roused the camps as they thundered by; men rose up, peered out from bed-tents as the stampede swept past, cursed the delay it would probably make, hoped none of the boys got hurt, and thanked the Lord the tents were pitched close to the creek and out of the track of the maddened herds.
Then they went back to bed to wait philosophically for daylight.
When Sunfish, between flashes, stumbled into a shallow washout, and sent Thurston sailing unbeautifully over his head, Bob pulled up and slid off his horse in a hurry.
"Yuh hurt, Bud?" he cried anxiously, bending over him. For Thurston, from the very frankness of his verdant ignorance, had won for himself the indulgent protectiveness of the whole outfit; not a man but watched unobtrusively over his welfare--and Bob MacGregor went farther and loved him whole-heartedly.
His voice, when he spoke, was unequivocally frightened.
Thurston sat up and wiped a handful of mud off his face; if it had not been so dark Bob would have shouted at the spectacle.
"I'm 'kinda sorter shuck up like,"' he quoted ruefully. "And my nose is skinned, thank you. Where's that devil of a horse?"Bob stood over him and grinned. "My, I'm surprised at yuh, Bud!
What would your Sunday-school teacher say if she heard yuh?