"Perhaps we can turn it! We'll have to make an awful run for it but we can try!"
They had already gathered the reins and were spurring their horses down the declivity.
Canby's thoroughbred leaped into the air as the steel pricked it and Helene was soon left behind. She saw that she could figure only as a spectator, so she slowed down and watched what followed in fascinated horror.
Canby was considerably farther off than Wallie, in the beginning, but the racing blood in the former's horse's veins responded gallantly to the urge of its rider. It stretched out and laid down to its work like a hare with the hounds behind it, quickly equalizing the distance.
Aunt Lizzie was poking at a rock with her toe when she looked up suddenly and saw her danger. The steer with a spread of horns like antlers and tapering to needle points was rushing down upon her, infuriated.
For a moment she stood, weak with terror, unable to move, until her will asserted itself and then, shrieking, she ran as fast as her stiff old legs could carry her.
Wallie and Canby reached the steer almost together. A goodly distance still intervened between it and Aunt Lizzie, but the gap was shortening with sickening rapidity and Helene grew cold as she saw that, try as they might, they could not head it.
The animal seemed to be conscious only of its fleeing victim. When she ran, her flight appeared to excite and enrage it further, for it bawled with anger. The fluttering petticoats were a challenge, and the steer was bent on reaching and destroying the strange object with the weapons nature had given it. It was accustomed to horsemen and had no fear of them, but it saw a menace in the little old woman screaming just ahead, so it ignored Canby and Wallie, and they could not swerve it.
Helene wrung her hands in a frenzy as she watched their futile efforts. Wallie always carried a rope on his saddle, why didn't he use it? Was he afraid? Couldn't he? She felt a swift return of her old contempt for him. Was he only a "yellow-back" cowpuncher after all, underneath his Western regalia? Momentarily she despised him. Notwithstanding his brave appearance he was as useless in a crisis like this as Canby. Pinkey was more of a man than either of them. He would stop that steer somehow if he had only his pocketknife to do it. Her lip curled disdainfully for she had an innate contempt of impotency and failure.
She cried out sharply as Aunt Lizzie stumbled and pitched headlong. Between exhaustion and terror that paralyzed her she was unable to get up, though she tried. The steer, flaming-eyed, was now less than fifty yards from her.