Helter skelter, maddened by fear, with nostrils distended, with set and glaring eyes, blind as their wild fellows, scarcely less dangerous, was a stampede of cattle. No longer the patient, submissive creatures, whose pace seemed ever too slow to our eager desires, but stupid beasts, full of fury, dashing, they knew, they cared not, where. A stampede of yoked and hitched cattle was one of the most thrilling episodes of our Journey. What was the cause of the stampede I cannot recall, but its terror I will not forget. What a screaming came from my younger brothers, huddled in the wagon, and I may add with truth, the delighted laughter of a baby sister. What a moment was that in which the racing cattle headed towards a steep, overhanging bank of the Platte! It was the climax to many a nightmare for many a year thereafter. [Illustration: _First Glimpse of the Valley._] And while, through this misplaced subject--"The Buffalo Herd"--I go backward, as it were, on our journey, I might refer to a sketch that is partly torn away from the book. From what remains of the leaf I gather that the drawing which once covered it when entire, was "The Passing of the Mail-Coach." On the slopes of Long Bluff there lay a wreck. It was the skeleton, as one might call it, what remained of a coach, that had been stopped by the Sioux. The leather was cut from its sides, by the Indians who had killed the driver and driven away the horses; and the ribs of wood and iron stuck up from the sand and gravel that had been washed around it. But this one in the sketch was not a coach that told of a tragedy, but one that went speeding by our camp, leaving a cloud of dust. In our hearts were regrets that we could not speed as fast. "The Man on the Box" was important in his day. He was an autocrat of the plains. When he brought the coach to its destination, that was if he happened to be on what was called "the last drive," he would draw on his tight-fitting, high-heeled boots; he would wear his richly-embroidered gloves; he would be the hero at "the Hall," the swell at "The Dance."