Nothing like that leap for life had ever been witnessed before.
The amazed cattle, cheated of their prey, wavered, and the leaders tried in vain to check themselves. Desperately they dug their forefeet into the edge of the gulch, but the treacherous lip of the chasm gave under their weight, and with a roar and rattle, a cloud of dust and a despairing bellow, four of them shot over the edge and vanished.
Rob could not repress a shudder as he patted his buckskin, and realized that but for the little steed's noble effort he might have shared the fate of the dumb brutes.
Before long the cow-punchers had the rest of the steers rounded up, and ready to be driven back to the Far Pasture. Many were the threats breathed against the Moquis as they did so. The cattle, as is the nature of these half-wild brutes, having had their run out, seemed inclined to collapse from fatigue. As long as unreasoning terror held sway among them they had galloped tirelessly, but now their legs shook under them and they quivered and drooped pitifully. But the cattlemen showed them no mercy. With loud yells and popping of revolvers and cracking of quirts, they rode round them, getting them together into a compact mass.
While all this was going on, Rob had ridden his buckskin along the edge of the gulch. Some two miles below the place where his leap had been made, he found a spot which seemed favorable for crossing. The pony slid down one bank on its haunches and clambered up the other like a cat. As the boy traversed the bottom of the Graveyard, he noticed a peculiarly offensive odor. The smell which offended his nostrils, he found, sprang from the carcasses of the cattle which had at various times fallen into the gulch, above where he was crossing.
"Wonder why they don't put up a fence here," thought the boy.
He did not learn till afterward that that very thing had been done, but every time a freshet occurred in the mountains a part of the gulch caved away, carrying with it the fence and all. It had thus grown to be less of an expense to the ranchmen to lose a few cattle every season than to erect new fences constantly.
By the time Rob rejoined his friends, the cattle were standing ready for the drive back to their pastures. A more forlorn looking lot of beasts could not have been imagined.
"They know they done wrong," volunteered Blinky, gazing at the dejected herd.
"Well done, my boy," exclaimed Mr. Harkness, as Rob rode up. "I never saw a finer bit of horsemanship. But let us hope that such a resource will never again be necessary."