“Hell’s loose!” yelled the men in their blankets, making for the temporary rope corral to secure horses. Simpson, tallow-colored with fear, clung like a cat to his horse, and dug the rowels in the beast’s flanks till they were bloody and dripping. He had seen Jim Rodney’s face above the white cloth as it fluttered in the face of the herd that came pounding behind him with the rumble of nearing thunder. He was too close to them to attempt to fire his revolver in the air in the hope of turning them, but the boys had evidently got into their saddles, to judge by the volley of shots that rang out and were answered. Simpson alone rode ahead of the herd that tore after him, ripping up the earth as it came, bellowing in its blind fury. His horse, a thoroughly seasoned cow-pony, sniffed the bedlam and responded to the goading spur. She had been in cattle stampedes before, and, though every fibre ached with fatigue, she flattened out her lean body and covered ground to the length of her stride at each gallop. The herd was so close that Simpson could smell the stench of their sweating bodies, taste their dust, and feel the scorch of their breath. The sound of their hoofs was like the pounding of a thousand propellers. From above looked the moon, round and serene; she had watched the passing of many peoples in the land of the red silence. The horse seemed to be gaining. A few more lengths ahead and Simpson could turn her to one side and let the maddened cattle race to their own destruction. All he asked of God was to escape their trampling hoofs, and though he gained he dug the rowel and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On they came; the chorus of their fear swelled like the voice of a mighty cataract, the pound, pound, pound of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers. Suddenly he felt himself sinking, horribly, irresistibly. “God! What is it?” as his horse went down with her foreleg in a gopher-hole. “Up, up, you damned brute!” but the mare’s leg had cracked like a pipe-stem. In his fury at the beast Simpson began kicking her, then started to run as the cattle swept forward like a black storm-cloud. The next second the great sea of cattle had broken over horse and rider. When it had passed there was not enough left of either to warrant burial or to furnish a feast for the buzzards. A few shreds of clothes, that had once been a man, lay scattered there; a something that had been a horse. XVII. Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst