Although George brought back to his blanket a most refreshing feeling of security, he did not sleep as soundly as he usually did. He went through all sorts of terrible things in his dreams, and started every time the fire snapped. He was wide awake again at one o’clock, and set out on his second tour of inspection. The moon, now nearly half an hour high, had brought up with it a cooling breeze which gently rustled the long grass of the prairie, and sent the sparks from the camp-fire circling high in the air. The wolves had closed their concert and gone off to find a more appreciative audience, and there was an air of peaceful quiet brooding over the scene. George forgot all his fears and continued his round with a light heart. He found the cattle quiet, but some of them had begun feeding and were straying away from the rest of the herd. While George was engaged in driving them back, and forcing the remainder of the herd into a more compact body, a yell, so sudden and startling that it made the cold chills creep all over him, arose on the air, and out from a little thicket of willows that grew a short distance from the belt in which the camp was located, dashed a party of horsemen who charged toward the herd at the top of their speed. They were Mexicans; George could see that at a glance. They had doubtless been hovering about the camp all night, and it was while they were working their way around to the leeward of the herd that their presence had been detected by the wakeful cattle. George stood for an instant as if he were rooted to the ground; and then with a wild cry of alarm he dashed forward, running diagonally across the front of the herd, hoping almost against hope that he might succeed in passing them, and thus avoiding the rush which he knew would come in a moment more. It was the only way in which he could escape being trampled to death. He ran as he had never run before, but he had made scarcely half a dozen steps when a rumble like that of an avalanche sounded close at his side, telling him that the cattle were coming. The strongest fence that was ever built would not have stopped them now, and George, had he attempted to drive them back or turn them aside, would have been trampled under their feet like a blade of grass. He saw and fully realized his danger, but could not escape it. Even Zeke, who was as light of foot as an antelope, could not have saved himself by his speed; and George, giving himself up for lost, fell flat upon the ground, clasped his hands over his head and awaited his fate. By the merest chance he threw himself into a little excavation in the prairie, which, in the years gone by, had doubtless served as a wallow for some old patriarch of a buffalo; but now it was covered with grass, and there were two or three little willows growing out of the bottom of it.