"Not much," said Joe. "That was just plain ordinary drifting; but there was one while, just before the cattle started, when I thought that it was nip and tuck whether we would have a stampede or not. It would not have taken much to start those cattle off, and it sure would have been a bad night to ride in front of 'em and to turn 'em." "I don't see how a man could ride fast over such a country as we crossed," Donald said. "Well," said Jack, "could, or could not, he'd just have had to. It's a ground-hog case when a stampede is on." "But I should think you'd break your neck; and kill all your horses." "Well," declared Joe, "sometimes a man falls and breaks his neck, and oftener still a horse falls and breaks his neck or a leg, but of course the cattle have got to be turned. That's what we're hired for, and it's our business to do our work." "You spoke before about turning the cattle. Where do you want to turn them to, and why do you want to turn them?" "We want to turn 'em to get 'em to mill, and if we once get 'em milling, the trouble is pretty well over." "I am sorry to seem so dull," said Donald, "but what do you mean by milling?" "Why, we want to turn the cattle and get 'em running around in a circle. The hind ones will follow the lead ones, and if you can turn the lead ones, and keep 'em turning, after awhile they just keep running around and around in a circle and the hind ones follow 'em, and as you can understand, they don't get very far away." "Now, certainly," exclaimed the Englishman, "that is very clever. I never should have thought of that. But how do you manage to turn them? Of course, you cannot go in front of them, because they would run over you and kill you." "You do go in front of 'em; and without you go in front of 'em, you surely can't turn 'em. What a puncher does is to get right up even with the head of the herd and maybe a little in front of it, and then to keep edging over so as to push the head of the herd away from him. Likely too he's got to make some gun play, because, of course, the flash and noise of the shots close to 'em will tend to push the cattle over. Sometimes men go right in front of 'em and try to stop 'em by shooting, but I never saw much good done in that way. "I reckon if you ask Vicente, or any of the older men here--McIntyre, for example--he'll tell you that it counts for more to try to push the cattle over from one side than it does to go in front of 'em and try to stop 'em. If you do that they may turn; but what's just as likely to happen is that they'll split and go off in two or three bunches--and that's likely to mean that the whole country has got to be ridden again to gather up these scattered cattle."