To Pratt, who was watching sharply, it was a question which got into action first--Frances or her wise little pinto. He did not see the girl speak to Molly; but the pony turned like a shot and whirled away after the careering steer. At the same moment, it seemed, Frances had her hair rope in her hand. The coils began to whirl around her head. The pinto was running like the wind. The bald-faced, ugly-looking brute of a steer was soon running neck and neck with the well-mounted girl. Pratt followed. He was more interested in the outcome of the chase than he was in where his grey was putting his feet. There was an eerie yell behind them. Pratt saw a wild-looking, hatless cowboy racing a black pony toward them. The whole herd seemed to have been turned in some miraculous way, and was thundering after Old Baldface and the girl. Pratt began to wonder if there was not danger. He had heard of a stampede, and it looked to him as though the bunch of steers was quite out of hand. Had he been alone, he would have pulled out and let the herd go by. But either Frances did not see them coming, or she did not care. She was after that bald-faced steer, and in a moment she had him. The whirling noose dropped and in some wonderful way settled over a horn and one of the steer's forefeet. When Molly stopped and braced herself, the steer pitched forward, turned a complete somersault, and lay on the prairie at the mercy of his captor. "Hurray!" yelled Pratt, swinging his hat. He was riding recklessly himself. He had seen a half-tamed steer roped and tied at an Amarillo street fair; but _that_ was nothing like this. It had all been so easy, so matter-of-fact! No display at all about the girl's work; but just as though she could do it again, and yet again, as often as the emergency arose. Frances cast a glowing smile over her shoulder at him, as she lay back in the saddle and let Molly hold Old Baldface in durance. But suddenly her face changed--a flash of amazed comprehension chased the triumphant smile away. She opened her lips to shout something to Pratt--some warning. And at that instant the grey put his foot into a ground-dog hole, and the young man from Amarillo left the saddle! He described a perfect parabola and landed on his head and shoulders on the ground. The grey scrambled up and shot away at a tangent, out of the course of the herd of thundering steers. He was not really hurt. But his rider lay still for a moment on the prairie. Pratt Sanderson was certainly "playing in hard luck" during his vacation on the ranges. The mere losing of his mount was not so bad; but the steers had really stampeded, and he lay, half-stunned, directly in the path of the herd. Old Baldface struggled to rise and seized upon the girl's attention. She used the rope in a most expert fashion, catching his other foreleg in a loop, and then catching one of his hind legs, too. He was secured as safely as a fly in a spider-web.