Barbee had run and thrown himself upon his horse. Steve had grasped the dragging reins of Andy Sprague's mount. Terry saw him and his two cowboys swing about toward the upper end. "Terry!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Down the cliffs again; quick! The fire is coming this way; the herds will stampede!" There was only the sound of thudding hoofs as the three men rode furiously to meet the menace the dawn had brought and seek to grapple with it. Then that sound had gone and its place, for a little taken by heavy silence, gradually gave way to new sounds. The crack of rifles, faintly heard--thin voices of men shouting a long way off--a sound like that of a distant sea, moving restlessly--grown to suggest the coming of a storm that ever swelled in violence--and then a deep and deepening rumble, like thunder. The herd had stampeded. To Terry there came then, for the first time in her life, the sense of utter helplessness and hopelessness. At least the others were doing something, no matter how fruitless it might prove, while she was doing nothing. Steve was riding full-tilt to meet the herd. She saw him and his men, strange figures in the uncertain light, looming big against the dawn sky and the fires' glow. They were shouting, waving their arms. Then, going down over a swell of earth they were lost to her. Again and again there came to her the sound of shots and men's voices shouting, cursing, yelling wild commands, a rising clamor meant to divert the blind rush of frightened beasts, to turn them to right and left so that they might scramble out of the valley before they came to the lower end where Terry stood--where was the yawning chasm down into which many a great, terror-filled body was doomed to plunge to annihilation unless the way were found to swing the flood of fear aside in time. Barbee and Bandy Oliver and the other boys were obeying Steve's commands, doing all that they could, seeking frantically to split the herd and divert it and so save it. But all of the time the wind strengthened, the fires rose higher and higher against the sky, the sparks soared to rarer altitudes, were flung further out, new fires were catching everywhere. The tall, dry grass was burning in a hundred places. The herd, sweeping on, was snorting its terror, yielding absolutely to the blind instinct of flight. And steadily the thunderous murmuring sound from the hoof-smitten earth rose and swelled. Closer and closer they came. Terry could distinguish Steve's voice. In her hand were the matches he had given her in order that she might read again his grandfather's letter. A little gasp broke from her lips. The letter fluttered from her hand, no longer of the slightest importance and on the wings of the wind went outward and then down into the chasm. She ran forward swiftly, a hundred yards from the precipice's edge. She struck a match, stopped briefly, set it to the grass.