In the meantime, the cattle were growing wilder and wilder from the pain caused by the hamstringer's knife, the wild career of the unmounted man among them, and Ted and Stella pressing through them from the rear with shouts and cracking quirts. "Great Scott! They'll get him!" shouted Ted, reining in his pony. The furious steers had turned their attention to the man on foot, and were surging about him with angry bellowings, charging upon him, and crowding him. He was in a very perilous position, and it was only that the cattle were herded so close together that he had not gone down sooner. But once the cattle got him down he would be gored and trampled to death. Nothing could save him. Ted and Stella were trying to force their way to his side, but were unable to do so. Notwithstanding the fact the fellow had been caught in the act of mutilating his cattle, Ted could not see him die without trying to save him. Now they heard a cry of fear, and saw the man throw his arms up in the air. The cattle were surging about him with wild and angry bovine cries, and with a great tossing of horns, and leaps into the air. There were muffled yells of agony from beneath the tossing mass of horns. "They've got him," muttered Ted. "They are wreaking their own revenge." "Are they killing him, Ted?" asked Stella. "They have got him down. The fool he was to go among them on foot. He should have known better." Ted made another effort to get through the cattle, and at last succeeded in making a lane for himself. "Stella," he shouted over his shoulder, "you stay where you are! This is nothing for you to see. Better let me attend to this." Stella was aware that Ted always knew what he was talking about when he warned her away from anything, and she made her way out of the herd. When Ted got to the spot where he had last seen the man, the cattle were still milling, but were getting calmer, and had no hesitancy in scattering when he rode among them slashing right and left with his quirt and firing his revolver over their heads. When he had cleared an open space he rode back into it, and instantly recoiled from the sight presented to him. On the ground lay the hamstringer, a mass of bloody clothes in which were torn flesh and broken bones. He was quite dead, and had been not only gored but had been trampled hundreds of times. The vengeance of the maimed animals was complete. CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT RAID. Ted bent over the mangled body of the hamstringer and turned him over. Then he leaped back with an exclamation of horror. He had recognized the miscreant. It was Sol Flatbush, the traitorous cow-puncher, member of the gang of cattle rustlers and gamblers headed by Shan Rhue, who had run off about five hundred head of cattle of the Circle S brand into the Wichita Mountains in Indian Territory.