Slowly they retreated to the camp and gave the warning. Immediately the fire was extinguished, and the punchers, still cursing over their misfortune, loaded every available weapon, breathing a hot and complete vengeance against the men that had outwitted them. Much to their chagrin they now recognized that Skidmore was but a clever member of the enemy, for if he had not been they felt that he would not have accomplished such a speedy and well-planned escape. Now, as the sheepmen drove their animals nearer and nearer to the pits, they urged them faster until the unhappy creatures, besides themselves at the weird occurrences of a night of terror, were at a headlong gallop. Suddenly one of the punchers heard that unmistakable accompaniment of running steers and the clashing of horns as the animals with lowered heads charged the works. "They're cows!" he yelled. "Don't shoot!" But it was too late. The maddened cattle were already at the first pits, plunging in with terrified bellows, or being transfixed on the stakes by the onrush of those behind. The pits were not more than ten feet deep, and only served to check the herd until they were full. Then those following trampled over their dying companions and charged the trenches where the cowboys lay. "Fire!" yelled Bissell, who was in command, and the guns of nearly seventy men poured a leaden hail of death into the forefront of the heedless cattle. Larkin's men by this time had drawn off to see that the havoc ran its course, and when they heard the desperate volleys they turned and rode southwest along the river-bank to the point where the sheep expected to cross. The cattle, which had been driven in a rather narrow column, continued to come on endlessly. The leaders dropped in windrows, but the followers leaped over them only to fall a little farther on. Driven by the resistless impulse of these behind, the animals unconsciously appeared like a charging regiment. Nearer and nearer the tide approached the cowboys' defenses; but now it was coming more slowly because of the dead bodies and the wounded animals that dragged themselves here and there, bellowing with pain and terror. At last, at the very mouths of the spitting guns the last of the steers dropped, and the few that remained alive turned tail and fled wildly back the way they had come. In front of the trenches was a horrible tangle of trampled, wounded creatures, rearing as best they could and stabbing one another with their long, sharp horns. "Everybody out an' kill the ones that ain't dead!" yelled Bissell, and the cowboys leaped over the breastworks on this hazardous errand of mercy. "Where are the sheep?" was the question every man asked himself and his neighbor, but no one could reply.