The song of the cowboys rose higher. The cattle bowed their heads. Their men were at hand. They were safe. Something had happened to the quiet stars. They were dying out one by one, and the wind was freshening. "Bless my hoofs!" muttered a yearling, "my horns are beginning to feel creepy." Softly the red steer lifted himself from the ground. "Come away," quoth he to the yearling. "Come away to the outskirts, and we'll move. My mother said...." The innocent fool followed, and a white heifer saw them move. Being a woman she naturally bellowed "Timber wolves!" and ran forward blindly into a dun steer dreaming over clover. Followed the thunder of cattle rising to their feet, and the triple crack of a whip. The little wind had dropped for a moment, only to fall on the herd with a shriek and a few stinging drops of hail, that stung as keenly as the whips. The herd broke into a trot, a canter, and then a mad gallop. Black fear was behind them, black night in front. They headed into the night, bellowing with terror; and at their side rode the men with the whips. The ponies grunted as they felt the raking spurs. They knew that an all-night gallop lay before them, and woe betide the luckless cayuse that stumbled in that ride. Then fell the hail--blinding and choking and flogging in one and the same stroke. The herd opened like a fan. The red steer headed a contingent he knew not whither. A man with a whip rode at his right flank. Behind him the lightning showed a field of glimmering horns, and of muzzles flecked with foam; a field of red terror-strained eyes and shaggy frontlets. The man looked back also, and his terror was greater than that of the beasts. The herd had surrounded him in the darkness. His salvation lay in the legs of _Whisky Peat_--and _Whisky Peat_ knew it--knew it until an unseen gopher hole received his near forefoot as he strained every nerve--in the heart of the flying herd, with the red steer at his flanks. Then, being only over-worked cayuse, _Whisky Peat_ fell, and the red steer fancied that there was something soft on the ground. * * * * * It was Michigan, Jim and Lafe who at last brought the herd to a standstill as the dawn was breaking, "What's come to The Corpse?" quoth Lafe. Jim loosened the girths of his quivering pony and made answer slowly: "Onless I'm a blamed fool, the gentleman is now livin' up to his durned appellation 'bout fifteen miles back--what there is of him and the cayuse." "Let's go and look," said Lafe, shuddering slightly, for the morning air, you must understand, was raw. "Let's go to--a much hotter place than Texas," responded Jim. "Get the steers to the Junction first. Guess what's left of The Corpse will keep." And it did. And that was how the fat man in Chicago got his beef. It belonged to the red steer. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: "Turnovers," Vol. VII.] THE HISTORY OF A FALL[8]