Dynamite tore on, with seemingly undiminished valor, but Jack knew that the end was near. “Only a few yards more, and then————” he thought, when he felt a different sensation. It filled him with alarm. He was dropping downward through the air. Down he plunged, while behind him came the thunder of the maddened steers. “Good heavens! Is this the end?” was the thought that flashed through the boy’s mind in that terrible fraction of time when he felt himself and his pony dropping through space. The next instant he felt the pony hit the ground under him. Like a stone from a slingshot, Jack was catapulted out of the saddle. He landed on the ground some distance from the pony. He was shaken and bruised, but he was up in a flash. In another instant the steers would be upon him. He would be crushed to a pulp under their hoofs unless he found some means of escape. “If I don’t do something quick, it’s good–bye for me,” he told himself. In frantic haste he looked about for some means of saving himself. All at once he spied through the darkness the black outlines of a cottonwood tree. In a flash his plan was formed. He slipped behind the trunk of the cottonwood, using it as a shield between himself and the oncoming cattle. Hardly had he slipped behind his refuge when an agonized cry came to his ears, the cry of a human being in mortal terror. Jack peered from behind his tree trunk. As he did so the form of a man rolled almost to his feet and lay still. With a thrill Jack recognized the white hood the figure wore and knew it must be the hooded horseman who had pursued him. Like himself, the man had been caught in the stampede and been thrown from his horse almost at the foot of the tree. Exerting all his strength, Jack pulled the man into shelter behind the tree scarcely a second before the crazed steers were upon them. In their blind frenzy of terror many of them dashed headlong into the tree, stunning and killing themselves. But the main herd swept by on both sides, leaving Jack and the unconscious man in a little haven of safety behind the tree trunk. Jack found himself wedged in between two barricades of bellowing, galloping steers, and for his deliverance from what had seemed certain death a few minutes before he offered up a fervent prayer of thanks. For some time the rush continued and then thinned out to a few stragglers. At last Jack thought it safe to emerge from behind his tree. In front of it lay several dead cattle, their brains knocked out by the force with which they had collided with the cottonwood. A few injured animals limped about moaning piteously. Some of them were so badly injured that Jack, who could not bear to see an animal suffer, put them out of their misery with his six–shooter.