On the word yellow fire streamed out from the four guns and, accompanying it, a perfect bedlam of shrieks and cries. The sheep were now upon them, and the hail of bullets dropped some 110 in their headlong career, piling them up against the horses and adding to the barricade. But it could not stop all, and a stream of the animals made its way over the bodies up to the very mouths of the spitting guns.
Now others stumbled and fell, to be instantly engulfed by the swirling flood behind; small, sharp feet were caught between the limbs of the struggling mass that eddied about the dead horses. Still the yellow fire stabbed out into the faces of the middlers—for now the leaders were already piling up mangled and dying in the rocky river-bed—but, past each side of this island of expiring creatures, thundered a vast, heaving stream, turbulent, silent, irrevocable.
The man in the mask with a revolver in each hand was firing steadily, and Larkin, thrilled at the sight of his apparent coolness, turned to look at him.
To his amazement he found that the mask had fallen or been snatched away. Again the man fired, and Bud Larkin’s jaw fell as he gazed on the queer, unmistakable features of the man who had saved his life that night.
It was Smithy Caldwell.
The sheep mind has the power of tenacity, but not that of change. There was scarcely a shot 111 left in the guns, and still the fear-blinded animals battered at the growing wall of dead and dying that divided them. But at last they began to push to each side, and gradually the idea of splitting took full hold.
Then the prisoners behind the dead horses sank down in almost hysterical relief, for there was no danger that any more would attempt to mount the barricade. In fact, had the obstacle to their progress been suddenly removed, the stampeded herds would have continued to split for an indefinite period.
Now, listening, Larkin could hear the crash of the animals through the underbrush and the horrid, sickening sounds of the writhing, half-dead mass in the river-bed as more and more, following their predecessors blindly, took the leap.
At last the stream on each side thinned, the rumbling thunder of pounding feet grew less, and the tail of the flock passed, leaving behind it a sudden, deathly silence. In the distance a faint murmur was heard, and Larkin found later that this was made by the two or three hundred which escaped death in the river.
As a matter of fact, the great number of the animals had filled the narrow gully, and the last 112 few charged across the bodies of their fallen comrades to solid ground and safety beyond.