It came to him suddenly that what the pony had fallen over might be made to act as a shield for himself. The boy sprang forward, groping in the dark amid the roaring of the storm and the thunder of the maddened herd. His hands touched a log. He found that it had so rotted away on one side as to make a partial shell. It was not enough to admit a human body, but it served as a sort of screen for him. Tad burrowed into it as far as he could get.
"I hope there are no snakes in here," he thought, snuggling close.
Yet between the two he preferred to take his chances with snakes, at that moment, rather than with the crazy steers.
The leaders of the steers cleared the log, just grazing it with their hind feet as they went over, sending a shower of dust and decayed wood over Tad.
The cattle immediately following the leaders did not fare so well. A number of them, leaping over the log at the same instant, fell headlong as the pony had done before them. However, the steers were less fortunate. Before they were able to scramble to their feet, others following had tumbled over on top of them, and Tad Butler found himself wedged in behind a barricade of bellowing cattle, whose flying hoofs made him hastily burrow deeper into the decayed log.
This obstruction soon caused the main body to swerve. Their solid front had been broken at last, yet they continued on as wildly as before, bellowing and horning one another in their mad flight.
The rain, which had held back during the brilliant electrical display, now came down in drenching torrents, packing down the sand of the plain which the wind, before, had picked up and tossed into the air in dense clouds.
Tad was soaked to the skin almost instantly. But he did not mind this. His thought, now, was to get out of his perilous position and follow the herd.
The cattle that had fallen so near him, were now one by one extricating themselves from their predicament, each one giving vent to a bellow as it did so and dashing after its companions.
The lad was not slow to crawl from his hiding place the moment he considered it safe to do so. As it was, he got away before the snarl of steers had entirely unraveled itself.