The rain, which had held back during the brilliant electrical display, now came down in drenching torrents, packing down the sand of the plain which the wind, before, had picked up and tossed into the air in dense clouds. Tad was soaked to the skin almost instantly. But he did not mind this. His thought, now, was to get out of his perilous position and follow the herd. The cattle that had fallen so near him, were now one by one extricating themselves from their predicament, each one giving vent to a bellow as it did so and dashing after its companions. The lad was not slow to crawl from his hiding place the moment he considered it safe to do so. As it was, he got away before the snarl of steers had entirely unraveled itself. What to do Tad did not know. His pony gone, and, with no sense of direction left, he was in sore straits. "I'll follow the cattle," he decided. "Besides, it's my business to stay with them if I can. I'll do it as long as I've got a leg to stand on," he declared, cautiously working around those of the cattle that were leaping from the heap and running away. The mesquite was still full of stragglers dashing wildly here and there. In the darkness, the boy was really in great danger. There were no large trees behind which he could dodge to get out of the way of the animals as they rushed toward him, nor was he able to see them when they did get near him. He was obliged to judge of their direction by sound alone. This was made doubly difficult since the rain had begun to fall, for now, young Butler could scarcely distinguish one sound from another. Once a plunging steer hit the lad a glancing blow with its great side, hurling him into a thicket of bristling mesquite. The thorns gashed his face and body, almost stripping the remnants of his tattered clothes from him. Still, with indomitable pluck, the lad sprang to his feet, stubbornly working his way through the thicket. He came out finally on the other side and floundering about for a time, found himself once more on a plain, which he had observed in the light from a flash of lightning extended away indefinitely. Off to the west, he plainly made out a large body of cattle. Apparently they were now headed to the northwest. It was almost a hopeless task for one to expect to be able to overhaul them on foot, and even were he to do so he could accomplish nothing after reaching them. But Tad kept on just the same, with the rain beating him until he was gasping for breath, the lightning playing about him in lingering sheets of yellow flame. He had run on in this way for fully half an hour when a flash disclosed an object to the right of him. It was moving, but Tad was sure it was not a steer. The boy changed his course somewhat and trotted along with more caution, shading his eyes with a hand that he might make out what it was when the next flash came. "It's a pony!" he shouted. "It's my pony!" The animal was standing with lowered head, gazing straight at the boy.