CHAPTER XXVI
WHO ARE THEY?
The encampment of Steve's outfit, and therefore the tent in which the four girls were sheltered, was on the side of the hill to the south of the narrow path connecting the twin valleys. It seemed as though the chuck wagon and tent, as well as the horse corral, were well out of the path of the charging cattle.
But when Nan Sherwood and her companions, awakened by the louder peal of thunder, gazed out of the tent opening and gained, by aid of the lightning, their initial glimpse of the stampede, it seemed as though a thousand bellowing throats and twice that number of tossing horns threatened the encampment.
"Grab your things and get out this way!" shouted Rhoda, leading the retreat through the rear of the tent.
Fortunately the girls had not taken off more than their outer clothing and their boots. They had no cots during this outing, but used sleeping-bags instead. Seizing such of their possessions as they could find in the dark, they followed Rhoda out at the rear and up the hillside.
From below the pandemonium of sound of the enraged and terrified cattle was all but deafening. At the corral the men who had been off watch were mounting their ponies. The girls heard Steve's stentorian voice shouting to Hesitation Kane:
"Can we swing 'em before they clog that cut into the other hollow,
Hess?"
"Nope!" and to the girls' surprise the horse wrangler snapped out the answer. "Shoot the leaders and pile 'em up in the gap. Then swing 'em."
"Oh, I don't want to do that," yelled Steve. "The boss will have a fit. Who started this thing, anyway? That fool boy?"
"Oh! where is Walter?" gasped Grace.
But another cowboy from down below shouted:
"It's a put up job. I saw somebody start 'em. They've been stampeded, Steve."
The next moment the hullabaloo of the cattle themselves made human voices unbearable. A flash of lightning showed the front of the herd as it charged up the slight rise to the mouth of the cut.
Ahead of them, riding like mad and using his coiled rope to urge his pony, came a single rider. Another flash of lightning revealed his identity to the girls.
"Walter! Oh, Walter! He will be killed!" shrieked Grace.
Nan Sherwood leaped a pace in advance as though she would go, afoot as she was, to his rescue. Bess covered her face with her hands. Rhoda shouted in so ear-piercing a tone that the men at the corral heard her:
"Save him! Don't let him go under, boys! Daddy will never forgive you if Walter is hurt."
But before she spoke a single rider had left the encampment like a missile from a gun. It was Hesitation Kane, riding low along his horse's neck, and swinging his big pistol in his left hand. He had taken it upon himself to go against Steve's orders.
A fusillade of shots met the forefront of the stampeded cattle just as it seemed Walter Mason must be overwhelmed. It was in the narrow cut between the two valleys. The leaders went down in a heap, and against the ridge made by their bodies the steers directly behind them crashed with an impact like two colliding trains!
The lightning revealed from moment to moment the awful sight. The cattle behind pressed against those ahead. The bellowing beasts were smothered—were crushed—by the score! It seemed to the girls and to Walter, who now had gained control of his pony and came riding back, as though half that herd of mad beasts must be sacrificed.
But Steve and the other herders saw their chance. They swept down on the flank of the herd. The well trained ponies made a living wall against the cattle. The latter began to mill—that is, turn and travel on the herd's own center.
Of course, many dropped and were trampled. It was a situation that took every ounce of pluck in a man's body to go up against that maddened herd. But Steve and his crew did it.
A rider appeared madly from the west. "Get your guns, boys!" he yelled. "It is a raid! Greasers! I seen 'em start the cattle stampeding!"
"You are bringing us stale news, boy," shouted the outfit's cook.
"We're going after them Greasers."
He and Tom Collins were already astride their ponies. Rhoda had got into her boots and now she ran and noosed her pony out of the herd, making the cast by the light of the electric flashes. She saddled, mounted, and was away after the two cooks. Walter joined her, followed quickly by Nan. Bess had to stay behind with Grace, who would never have ventured on such an expedition.
They charged down the swale toward the west. Walter shouted to the others what he had seen at the start of the stampede.
"That is it," cried Rhoda. "Mexicans! When daddy hears about this he will be just about wild."
When the little party had swept to the far end of the hollow there were no signs of the Mexicans who had ridden down into the place to stampede the steers. The rain began to fall; but there was not much of that. It was mostly a tempest of thunder and lightning.
The circling cattle swung west finally and came down the valley at a less dangerous pace. The two cooks, with Rhoda, Nan and Walter, remained to meet and turn their front again. By the time the cattle had circled the valley twice, they were leg-weary and their fears were quenched.
It was a hard night that followed for all. Half the gang had to ride herd until daybreak to make sure that the nervous creatures did not start again. The other men and ponies dragged the dead beasts out of the throat of that gap between the two hollows.
More than a hundred were either dead or had to be shot. The bodies had to be dragged out of the way on the hillsides. Otherwise the steers remaining could not have been got out of the pasture.
Rhoda cried. Every carcass dragged out of the way meant a decided loss for Rose Ranch. And the pity of it!
One puncher was sent to the ranch house to report and ask for a beef wagon to come up. But not more than two carcasses could be used by the whole ranch force at this time of year. The weather was too hot.
By morning the path was cleared. Steve said:
"Get 'em out! Get 'em out as soon as possible. Before night the heavens will be black with buzzards and the hills yellow with coyotes. There will be some singing around this place for a day or two."
They drove the exhausted cattle slowly into the outer pasture, and from there headed them deeper into the hills to a larger valley where the herbage was known to be good.
"I don't know who them Mexicans were. I don't believe it was the same outfit that the boss and the Long Bow crowd chased. They got over the Border, I understand," said Steve.
Walter and the girls talked this mystery over by themselves. It puzzled them vastly.
They had come up here to hunt for the Mexican bandit's treasure; and here they had run into a gang of outlaws just as bad as the old Lobarto gang that had been such a scourge to the country six years before.
"I believe the single Mexican you girls saw at the bears' den belonged to this gang that started the cattle stampeding," Walter declared.
"It must be true," agreed Rhoda.
"Then what shall we do? Don't you think you girls had better go back to the ranch house and postpone treasure hunting until the Mexicans are rounded up?"
"And let them find Lobarto's treasure?" demanded Bess. "Maybe that is what they are after."
"Bess says something sensible, that is sure," Rhoda broke in. "I hate to think of any of those mean Mexicans getting the hidden wealth."
"Just think of poor Juanita and her mother," Nan said, agreeing with her girl friends. "These bad Mexicans will never give back any of the money Lobarto stole."
"Scarcely!" exclaimed Rhoda.
"I suppose Walter is speaking for me," said his sister simply. "I know I am timid. But I will stick if you other girls do."
"Hoorah!" shouted Bess, hugging her. "Why! you are getting to be a regular sport. We've got Tom and Mr. Kane with us, besides Frank, the other cowboy. I am not afraid of the Mexicans—not much, that is—whether they are Juan Sivello and his gang or not."
"Hear! Hear!" agreed Nan. "And having done so much harm in this neighborhood, perhaps they have run away a good many miles to escape pursuit. Let us go and take a look in the bears' den, anyway."
And so it was agreed.