Chapter II.
HOW CAL EVANS RODE FOR HELP.
The excited boy on the red mustang was not allowed to use his own judgment altogether as to the right place for riding out from the forest. Hundreds and hundreds of cows and bulls and oxen took that important matter into their own hoofs. They had not been so sensitive as the horses, and had not been whipped or shouted at. They, therefore, had not been stampeded so quickly, but they went wild enough as soon as the craze took them. They may have been wondering whether a norther or a prairie-fire or a travelling earthquake were after Sam and Cal and the horses when over the grassy rolls came that squad of yelling red-men. The whoops were an awful noise to hear, and one very thin, respectable old cow set off at once. In another moment there were tossing horns and anxious bellowing in all directions, while some half-grown calves threw up their heels and followed the cow. A wiry, vicious-looking ox, with only one horn, punched with it the ribs of his next neighbor. That example spread like wildfire; and something said by the widest-horned, longest-legged, deepest-throated old bull may have really meant:
"Now—ow, every fellow bellow and run like all ruin—uin—uin!"
Run like ruin they did, and, of course, they broke for the timber, although the Indians who were threatening Sam Herrick were right ahead of them. If a regiment of infantry had been in the way it would have been scattered all the same, and what were a dozen or so of mere pony-riders? Sam was safe among his fallen trees, but the Indians had to get out of the way of that stampede. Cal Evans saw the cattle coming, and he had his wits about him.
"Hurrah!" he shouted. "I'll put them between me and the redskins. Now, Dick, it's our chance."
The red mustang knew that he had been called upon. There was a whinny, a bound, a swift dash of nearly two minutes into the open plain, and then a burst of whooping announced that he and his rider had been seen.
What of that, when all that tumult of tossing horns was streaming along behind them, putting its barrier between Cal and the nearest Apache warrior? Follow him? What would ponies already overdriven be worth behind the long, swinging, elastic bounds of the red mustang?
"Hurrah, Dick! There's no other such horse living! Hurrah!"
On, on, on! and there was no need of a trail to follow, for Sam Herrick's last advice had been, "Ride due north, Cal, and you won't lose any distance."