At first she felt an impulse to call, but she knew her voice could not reach him at that distance. Look, toward the sun! What is that? A wall of smoke? A cloud of rolling, increasing dust, mounting higher, higher, nearer, nearer, and caused only by the rushing, fleeing hoofs of a stampeding herd! Frozen with terror the girl stood irresolute, unable to decide whether to flee in the hope that she might reach her horse or to try to seek safety among the frail protection of the thorn shrubs! She could feel the earth begin to tremble from the rush of pounding hoofs and saw the ominous cloud rolling nearer and nearer. There was no time to flee; no chance to reach the trees; only now could she rush to that projecting boulder and cast her body close against it in the hope that the frantic steers might not crumble it in pieces in their mad onslaught. What was that she heard? She hesitated an instant as she neared the rock whose unpromising shelter she sought. Surely she heard someone calling her name. “Bess—Bess,” the agonized tones came to her ears! Where from, from whom came that ray of hope? Now she reached the rock. Standing boldly upon it she placed her hands to her lips in a rounded funnel and screamed with all her strength, again and again. Like a flash across and from out the cloud of dust shot Eagle! She saw the red in his nostrils as he leaped directly toward her, a fleck of foam struck her face—and then—and then a vise clutched the beaded buckskin belt; some Herculean arm tore her from the pedestal and hot, swiftly drawn breaths moistened her cheek and neck. She felt herself flying through obscure space! She felt her breath gripped out of her body by some terrible, encircling pressure. What dreadful creature held her in such a death-like grip? She lifted her hands and felt the rough bristles on a man’s cheeks, then let them slide together about his tense neck in a tenacious hold. A firm, stirruped foot supported one of hers and she let her weight settle upon it. Each breath she drew was impregnated with stifling dust, while surging in her ears was the bellowing of frantic steers and thundering of a thousand hoofs! Would those mad, fleeing creatures never cease; would they never swerve; would they ever keep gaining? What if Eagle should stumble! What if his double burden should prove greater than his strength? The terrifying thought made the girl’s arms cling all the more firmly about the rigid neck and made her heart beat with aching throbs in her parched throat! She placed her lips close to the man’s ear and in an agonized and almost inaudible voice cried, “Hurry, for God’s sake, hurry!”