"That antelope story of yours is a pretty good one, Hugh, but I've got another," spoke up Tom Smith. "I was on herd one bright moonlight night and the cattle were all lying down. I'd been riding about 'em and had stopped for a little time, and was sitting still on my horse. I was about half asleep, with my face to the cattle, and my horse must have gone altogether asleep. He must have been asleep, because he fell on his knees, and when he fell the saddle-flaps squeaked. That started the cattle. They jumped up and ran; but they didn't go far. I don't think they really stampeded--they were just startled, not scared." "I reckon everybody was kind o' surprised that time," chuckled Hugh. "I know I was," admitted Tom. "I don't call that stampede by the antelope, nor the one Tom just spoke about, a real stampede," said Joe; "but that stampede of the yearlings, and the one we had last night, were sure enough the real thing." "Yes," said Hugh, "those yearlings were scared for keeps. That bunch had just come over the trail from Texas, and the animals were tired and thin. They'd just come in and hadn't been branded. I never would have supposed that they could have stampeded, but they were scared; and they were always afraid of that corral. We never got that bunch into that corral afterward. We had to rope most of 'em out on the flat, and brand 'em that way. It was awful slow work, and before we got through we tried separating 'em into little bunches of forty or fifty, and these little bunches we could get into the corral." "Wasn't it dark last night?" remarked Donald. "I do not remember ever to have seen a blacker night." "I guess so," said Joe. "We've all of us been out on some of those black nights when you just can't see anything. Some nights maybe you think it's just as dark as it can possibly get, and then all at once it gets so much darker that you think it hadn't been at all dark before. On some of those nights you can see the electricity on your horse, a sort of blue light running up from your horse's ears and then maybe a little blue flame running down the back of his neck toward your saddle. I never saw cattle run in that kind of weather; though you'd think they would.