Rustling footsteps startled her. “Why, it’s daddie!” she exclaimed, her heart beating audibly. “I thought you were an Indian or a bear!”
“You oughtn’t to go off alone, my daughter. There is some hidden danger threatening us; I feel, but cannot divine it. Something is going wrong somewhere or somehow. Let’s hurry back to camp.”
“You’re the last person on earth I’d suspect of giving way to a morbid fancy, daddie dear. You must be very tired.”
“It isn’t that, my daughter. I am sad because you have allowed your heart to stray, and I do need you so much—so much!”
She answered not a word.
XXVIII
THE STAMPEDE
The next morning brought unexpected delays. The repairs about the camp and wagons consumed more time than had been anticipated, and it was ten o’clock before the cattle, which had been allowed to stray farther from camp than usual, in search of the dried and scanty herbage that alone staved off starvation, were driven into camp and hurried down to the river-bank to drink. The swiftness, foam, and sudden chill of the water, its depth and roaring, confused and frightened the half-sick and half-starved animals; and one, a patriarchal bull, the master and leader of the herd, who had often before made trouble, gave vent to a deep, sonorous bellow like the roar of an ancient aurochs. Then, with nose in air, he struck out across the stream, the herd following. A small, rocky cape crept out into the water on the opposite bank, affording the only visible landing-place; and up this the panic-stricken creatures scrambled in a mad stampede, which the helpless occupants of the camp surveyed with the calmness of despair.
“I had no idea that the poor creatures had enough life left in them to run a dozen rods on level ground,” said Captain Ranger, after a grim silence. “Boys,” he added in a husky voice, as he swallowed a great lump in his throat, “are any of you able to swim Snake River?”
“I can do it,” answered John Brownson, an obliging young teamster, who had joined the company early in the journey and had made himself useful on many trying occasions.
“And I too,” said John Jordan, another favorite of road and camp. The two intrepid volunteers shook hands with their anxious Captain and plunged boldly into the roaring, swirling, deafening torrent, through which Jordan swam with ease, his head now bobbing out of sight and now rising above the foaming current, to disappear again and again, till at last he was seen to emerge from the water on the opposite steep and ascend the almost sheer acclivity leading to the table-land above. It was a brave and daring feat, but it proved fruitless. The poor, panic-stricken cattle failed to recognize as a friend the stark white apparition, entirely bereft of clothing. It was all in vain that he called the leader of the herd by name; and when the frightened creature turned and charged him, and there was no shelter but some patriarchal sagebrush trees, he took refuge behind the biggest of them till the aurochs changed his mind and turned to follow the stampeding herd.