Jack the Young Cowboy: An Eastern Boy's Experiance on a Western Round-up

by George Bird Grinnell

"That must have been what Bill was talking about when he called back to us," Joe said to the others. "We ought to have sent some one up to find out what he was saying."

"That's so," agreed Jack; "but, say, Joe, you know more about cattle than I do, what is it that makes stock stampede? Of course, it's easy enough to see why they might get frightened at the smell of blood, but I understand that sometimes they start off without any reason whatever—any reason we can see, at least."

"Well," Joe answered slowly, "you'll have to ask somebody who knows more than I do. I've seen cattle start off without any cause at all that I could see, and they 'most always start off without any reason. On a stormy night I've seen them stampede at a flash of lightning, and then again, one still night I saw a bunch start when one of the boys lighted a match for his cigarette. One fall I was helping drive a bunch of beef to the railroad; they went down into a little valley and when they got close to the stream a big flock of blackbirds flew up in a thick cloud, making, of course, some noise with their wings, and them fat beef just turned and ran for half a day. Some of the cattle we never did find, and those that we got I guess had lost fifty pounds to the head."

"I suppose," said Jack, "that it is just panic, and, of course, in a panic nothing ever stops to reason."

"I guess that's about the size of it. I've read in the papers stories about people getting scared and stampeding, just exactly the way cattle or horses do, and I reckon that all animals are a good deal alike in this, whether they go on two legs or on four."

"Why, yes," said Jack; "some of the stories I've read told about people getting scared in a theater when it took fire, and they all seemed to lose their senses, and sometimes the firemen would find the bodies all piled up in a corner or against the wall, the under ones dead from suffocation, just the way scared sheep will pile up sometimes in the corner of the shed, when you are catching them to dip them. The men are just as bad as the women and children, and seem to try to fight with them, trying to get out first."

"Down South I once saw a bunch of mules stampede. They didn't seem to have any idea where they were going, and a part of the bunch ran right slam into a freight-car, and, of course, killed themselves."

"Well, it surely is not easy to explain these things," declared Jack. "I would like mighty well to have some of these professors who are always studying about the way the mind works tell me how the mind of a horse or a cow acts when it is stampeding."

Joe laughed.

"Hold on there," he said. "You want to get straight on that, I reckon. I never heard, and I don't believe anybody else ever did, of a horse or a cow stampeding. To have a stampede you've got to have a lot of animals together, and they act on each other and make each other more and more scared all the time. You can frighten a single horse, or a single cow, and it will run away, but it won't run far; but you stampede a bunch of stock and it will run and run and keep on running, and for a while it keeps running harder and harder, all the time."