Springing up as the mare whirled, Gordon saw laid out directly beneath the course of the stampede down and around the stony staircases. At first it stood out clearly as in those cinema pictures of galloping men taken from a height. Following the first man’s cry came the wild yells of the second and third. One! two! three! he saw them squeezed out over the cliff; saw them strike the next level and bound off and over on a longer leap; saw them turn, slowly in midair till the horses showed like fat slugs above the men; saw the final crash and disappearance in the chaparral below. But when his glance came back the crystal clearness was gone, obscured by yellow dust cloud from the bowels of which men and horses were ejected sideways as the stampede whirled on down.
Of the thirty raiders, but one had a chance—he who brought up the rear. But as he turned to run he came face to face with Jake, who had sprung up to see. Instantly Jake raised his gun, but there came a roar and rattle of stones and hoofs. Before he could fire the dust cloud swallowed the man. Three minutes later it rolled down the last night to the pastures.
Over the Bowl silence fell again, golden, sunlit silence broken only by the screech of the hovering hawk. As before, the wind whispered in the sage, the clouds marched slowly across the blue fields above, the bees went busily upon their ways; but in the mean time—when the dust settled there remained, of the two hundred horses and thirty men, only the few animals that spread out fanwise as they galloped across the level bottoms.
With the swiftness, sureness of a lightning stroke in the night it had come, the doom—so swiftly that Lee and Gordon above, Jake and Sliver below, could only stand and stare, doubting their eyes. And Bull—
The instant the mare turned his mind leaped to the inevitable conclusion. With a roar, bellow of rage, inchoate, wild as the snarl of a balked tiger, he threw his hands on high, rifle waving like a reed in one great fist. Crash! lock, stock, and barrel, it flew in a thousand pieces as he brought it down on a rock! From the bank he leaped down to the trail, in his hot mind some mad idea of stopping the rush. But already the stampede had passed. He ran a few yards, as though to overtake and pull it back. But it swept on and down beyond his speed. Stopping, then, arms raised skyward, fists clenched, teeth bared, eyes glaring in the midst of his swollen, purple face, he stood, a towering figure of furious despair.
Into those few minutes were compressed all the agonies he had endured in the last few weeks—his trial, temptations, failure, bitter disappointment, tragic grief, crowned by this, the robbing of his just revenge. Swelling with a sense of vast injustice, the injustice that created the world on a scheme of struggle and pain, he turned maniacal eyes to the sky; stood shaking his bunched fists while a terrible blasphemy rose to his lips. But it never issued. For in the moment that it seemed his reason must crack there came slipping into his hot mind, like a cooling breath, the old vision—of Mary and Betty as on that last night.
In the sunlight that wrapped the valley, just as in the vast world loneliness under the quiet stars, he sensed her presence. His arms dropped, the mad light died. Bowing his dark face in his hands, he shook again with the throes of silent grief—but only for a short space. Presently he looked up, the old humility restored, its expression on his lips.
“’Twasn’t for me. I wasn’t fit. ’Twas taken out of my hands.”
Quiet now, he watched the horses careering over the bottoms. When at last Sliver joined him he gave quiet orders: “Go down, you an’ Jake, an’ collect up their guns—an’ ammunition. Bring up fresh horses for all of us an’ a couple for the packs. We’ll have to light out for the border at once.”