It was as if a battery of heavy field pieces boomed overhead. The entire herd was on its feet and stood close-huddled, their tails to the coming storm. Now the horses were loping steadily in their endless circling--a pace they could hold for hours if need be. For one blinding instant Thurston saw far down the valley; then the black curtain dropped as suddenly as it had lifted. “Keep a-hollering, Bud!” came the command, and after it Bob's voice trilled high above the thunder-growl: “Hosanna in the high-est. Hosanna to your King!” A strange thrill of excitement came to Thurston. It was all new to him; for his life had been sheltered from the rages of nature. He had never before been out under the night sky when it was threatening as now. He flinched when came an ear-splitting crash that once again lifted the black curtain and showed him, white-lighted, the plain. In the dark that followed came a rhythmic thud of hoofs far up the creek, and the rattle of living castanets. Sunfish threw up his head and listened, muscles a-quiver. “There's a bunch a-running,” called Bob from across the frightened herd. “If they hit us, give Sunfish his head, he's been there before--and keep on the outside!” Thurston yelled “All right!” but the pounding roar of the stampede drowned his voice. A whirlwind of frenzied steers bore down upon him--twenty-five hundred Panhandle two-year-olds, though he did not know it then, his mind was all a daze, with one sentence zigzagging through it like the lightning over his head, “Give Sunfish his head, and keep on the outside!” That was what saved him, for he had the sense to obey. After a few minutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears and the crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs close upon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as it were, while the tumult swept by. Presently he was galloping along behind and wondering dully how he got there, though perhaps Sunfish knew well enough. In his story of the West--the one that had failed to be convincing--he had in his ignorance described a stampede, and it had not been in the least like this one. He blushed at the memory, and wondered if he should ever again feel qualified to write of these things. Great drops of rain pounded him on the back as he rode--chill drops, that went to the skin. He thought of his new canary-colored slicker in the bed-tent, and before he knew it swore just as any of the other men would have done under similar provocation; it was the first real, able-bodied oath he had ever uttered. He was becoming assimilated with the raw conditions of life. He heard a man's voice calling to him, and distinguished the dim shape of a rider close by. He shouted that password of the range, “Hello!” “What outfit is this?” the man cried again.