“There’s something up,” thought George, once more turning his eyes toward the cattle. Some of the uneasy ones, reassured by his presence, were walking about among their companions, as if they were looking for a good place to lie down, while the others remained in a defiant attitude and snuffed the air as before. “There’s something up,” repeated George, “and I have been expecting it. I have felt very nervous and timid for two or three days, and I don’t know how to account for it. If there is anybody within hearing or smelling distance who has no business here, I can find it out.”
George walked back to the camp, picked up his rifle, and after unfastening the lasso with which his horse was confined, he jumped on the animal’s back without saddle or bridle and rode away in the darkness, paying no heed to a bray of remonstrance from Bony who followed as far as the length of his lariat would allow him to go. He rode out on the prairie for a hundred yards or more, and then stopped his horse and listened again. The animal stood perfectly quiet for a few seconds, looking first one way and then another, and turning his ears toward all points of the compass, and apparently satisfied with the result of his reconnoissance, he put down his head and began cropping the grass.
“Hold up, here!” exclaimed George, seizing the horse by the mane and tapping him gently on the side of his head with the muzzle of his rifle to make him turn around. “We have nothing to be frightened at yet—that’s evident. Now, old fellow, I shall leave you loose. Keep your ears open and wake us up if you hear anything!”
George rode back to camp and sought his blanket feeling a little more at his ease. He had as much faith in his horse as he had in Zeke (the latter used to say that he could smell an Indian or a Greaser at night as far as he could see him in the daytime), and since the animal could not discover anything suspicious, it was as good evidence as he wanted that there was nothing to fear. No doubt some of the wild members of the herd felt as nervous and uneasy as he did, and took their own way to show it.
Although George brought back to his blanket a most refreshing feeling of security, he did not sleep as soundly as he usually did. He went through all sorts of terrible things in his dreams, and started every time the fire snapped. He was wide awake again at one o’clock, and set out on his second tour of inspection. The moon, now nearly half an hour high, had brought up with it a cooling breeze which gently rustled the long grass of the prairie, and sent the sparks from the camp-fire circling high in the air. The wolves had closed their concert and gone off to find a more appreciative audience, and there was an air of peaceful quiet brooding over the scene. George forgot all his fears and continued his round with a light heart. He found the cattle quiet, but some of them had begun feeding and were straying away from the rest of the herd. While George was engaged in driving them back, and forcing the remainder of the herd into a more compact body, a yell, so sudden and startling that it made the cold chills creep all over him, arose on the air, and out from a little thicket of willows that grew a short distance from the belt in which the camp was located, dashed a party of horsemen who charged toward the herd at the top of their speed. They were Mexicans; George could see that at a glance. They had doubtless been hovering about the camp all night, and it was while they were working their way around to the leeward of the herd that their presence had been detected by the wakeful cattle.
George stood for an instant as if he were rooted to the ground; and then with a wild cry of alarm he dashed forward, running diagonally across the front of the herd, hoping almost against hope that he might succeed in passing them, and thus avoiding the rush which he knew would come in a moment more. It was the only way in which he could escape being trampled to death. He ran as he had never run before, but he had made scarcely half a dozen steps when a rumble like that of an avalanche sounded close at his side, telling him that the cattle were coming. The strongest fence that was ever built would not have stopped them now, and George, had he attempted to drive them back or turn them aside, would have been trampled under their feet like a blade of grass. He saw and fully realized his danger, but could not escape it. Even Zeke, who was as light of foot as an antelope, could not have saved himself by his speed; and George, giving himself up for lost, fell flat upon the ground, clasped his hands over his head and awaited his fate. By the merest chance he threw himself into a little excavation in the prairie, which, in the years gone by, had doubtless served as a wallow for some old patriarch of a buffalo; but now it was covered with grass, and there were two or three little willows growing out of the bottom of it.
This protection, slight as it was, saved the boy’s life. He had barely time to crowd himself close against the frail stems of the willows before the frantic cattle were upon him. The roar of their hoofs on the hard ground was almost deafening. It was louder than the roar of all the northers he had ever heard crowded into one; but even while he was wondering why some of the cattle did not jump upon him the roar subsided, and George, looking up through the willows which had been bent over his head, saw the moon shining down upon him. Every steer had jumped the wallow, and George had escaped with nothing more than a terrible fright. While he was congratulating himself upon his good fortune, a clatter of hoofs sounded near, and he ducked his head just as two horsemen, riding side by side, dashed over the wallow in pursuit of the flying herd.
The boy’s first thought, after he had satisfied himself that he had escaped without injury, was of Zeke. What had become of him? There was one thing certain—George knew it now as well as he did a few minutes later—and that was that the herdsman had made a fight, and a good one, too. Although the old fellow appeared to be a sound sleeper, he would jump to his feet the instant he heard any unusual noise, and he was wide awake the moment he opened his eyes. More than that, he kept his Winchester close at hand, and could discharge it with a rapidity and accuracy that George had tried in vain to imitate. Zeke was probably on his feet before the yell that frightened the cattle was half uttered, and as soon as he got there he was ready to begin shooting. Of course George had not heard the report of his rifle, for the rumble of that multitude of hoofs about his ears would have drowned the roar of a cannon.
“But I know, all the same, that he did shoot, and that some of those raiders didn’t get away,” thought George, as he once more raised his head and looked over the grass in the direction of the camp. “I think I had better stay here. Zeke will know when the danger is over, and then he will call to me. I wonder if he is there now? Somebody is punching up the fire, sure!”
The old buffalo wallow into which George had thrown himself, was about a hundred yards distant from the willows, and the grass was so high that he could not see the camp; but he could see the smoke of the fire as it arose through the tops of the trees that hung over it. Just now the fire was blazing brightly, and the sparks were rising from it in volumes. This was what led George to believe that there was somebody in the camp. It couldn’t be one of the raiders, he told himself, for they never stopped. They stampeded the cattle and dashed on after them to get out of reach of the bullets in the herder’s rifles.