CHAPTER XVII-THE STAMPEDE
Be it said of the group of thoughtless cowboys (of whom were the wildest spirits of Number Two camp) that their first demonstration as they dashed out of the coulie upon the two girls was their only one. Their imitation of an Indian attack was nipped in the bud by the bursting of the electric storm. There was no time for the continuance of the performance arranged particularly to startle Jane Ann and Ruth Fielding.
Ruth forgot the patter of the approaching ponies. She had instantly struck into her song-high and clear-at her comrade"s advice; and she drew Freckles closer to the herd. The bellowing and pushing of the cattle betrayed their position in any case; but the intermittent flashes of lightning clearly revealed the whole scene to the agitated girls.
They were indeed frightened-the ranch girl as well as Ruth herself. The fact that this immense herd, crowding and bellowing together, might at any moment break into a mad stampede, was only too plain.
Caught in the ma.s.s of maddened cattle, the girls might easily be unseated and trampled to death. Ruth knew this as well as did the Western girl. But if the sound of the human voice would help to keep the creatures within bounds, the girl from the Red Mill determined to sing on and ride closer in line with the milling herd.
She missed Jane Ann after a moment; but another flash of lightning revealed her friend weaving her pony in and out through the pressing cattle, using the quirt with free hand on the struggling steers and breaking them up into small groups.
The cowboys who had dashed out of the coulie saw the possibility of disaster instantly; and they, too, rode in among the bellowing steers.
With so many heavy creatures pressing toward a common center, many would soon be crushed to death if the formation was not broken up. Each streak of lightning which played athwart the clouds added to the fear of the beasts. Several of the punchers rode close along the edge of the herd, driving in the strays. Now it began to rain, and as the very clouds seemed to open and empty the water upon the thirsty land, the swish of it, and the moaning of the wind that arose, added greatly to the confusion.
How it _did_ rain for a few minutes! Ruth felt as though she were riding her pony beneath some huge water-spout. She was thankful for the slicker, off which the water cataracted. The pony splashed knee-deep through runlets freshly started in the old buffalo paths. Here and there a large pond of water gleamed when the lightning lit up their surroundings.
And when the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun, the cattle began to steam and were more troublesome than before. The lightning flashes and thunder continued, and when a second downpour of rain began it came so viciously, and with so great a wind, that the girls could scarcely ride against it.
Suddenly a shout came down the wind. It was taken up and repeated by voice after voice. The camp at the far end of the herd had been aroused ere this, of course, and every man who could ride was in the saddle. But it was at the camp-end of the herd, after all, that the first break came.
"They"re off!" yelled Darcy, riding furiously past Ruth and Jane Ann toward where the louder disturbance had arisen.
"And toward the river!" shouted another of the cowboys.
The thunder of hoofs in the distance suddenly rose to a deafening sound.
The great herd had broken away and were tearing toward the Rolling River at a pace which nothing could halt. Several of the cowboys were carried forward on the fore-front of the wave of maddened cattle; but they all managed to escape before the leaders reached the high bank of the stream.
Jane Ann screamed some order to Ruth, but the latter could not hear what it was. Yet she imitated the Western girl"s efforts immediately. No such tame attempts at controlling the cattle as singing to them was now in order. The small number of herdsmen left at this point could only force their ponies into the herd and break up the formation-driving the mad brutes back with their quirts, and finally, after a most desperate fight, holding perhaps a third of the great herd from running wildly into the stream.
This had been a time of some drought and the river was running low. The banks were not only steep upon this side, but they were twenty feet and more high. When the first of the maddened beeves reached the verge of the bank they went headlong down the descent, and some landed at the edge of the water with broken limbs and so were trampled to death. But the plunging over of hundreds upon hundreds of steers at the same point, together with the washing of the falling rain, quickly cut down these banks until they became little more than steep quagmires in which the beasts wallowed more slowly to the river"s edge.
This heavy going did more than aught else to r.e.t.a.r.d the stampede; but many of the first-comers got over the shallow river and climbed upon the plain beyond. All night long the cowboys were gathering up the herd upon the eastern sh.o.r.e of the river; those that had crossed must be left until day dawned.
And a very unpleasant night it was, although the stampede itself had been of short duration. A troop of cattle had dashed through the camp and flattened out the tent that had sheltered the lady visitors.
Fortunately the said visitors had taken refuge in the supply wagon before the cattle had broken loose.
But, led by The Fox, there was much disturbance in the supply wagon for the time being. Fortunately a water-tight tarpaulin had kept the girls comparatively dry; but Mary c.o.x loudly expressed her wish that they had not come out to the camp, and the other girls were inclined to be a little fractious as well.
When Jane Ann and Ruth rode in, however, after the trouble was all over, and the rain had ceased, a new fire was built and coffee made, and the situation took on a more cheerful phase. Ruth was quite excited over it all, but glad that she had taken a hand in the herding of the cattle that had not broken away.
"And if you stay to help the boys gather the steers that got across the river, to-morrow, I am going to help, too," she declared.
"Tom and Bob will help," Helen said. "I wish I was as brave as you are, Ruth; but I really am afraid of these horned beasts."
"I never was cut out for even a milkmaid, myself," added Heavy. "When a cow bellows it makes me feel queer up and down my spine just as it does when I go to a menagerie and hear the lions roar."
"They won"t bite you," sniffed Jane Ann.
"But they can hook you. And my! the noise they made when they went through this camp! You never heard the like," said the stout girl, shaking her head. "No. I"m willing to start back for the ranch-house in the morning."
"Me, too," agreed Madge.
So it was agreed that the four timid girls should return to Silver Ranch with Ricarde after breakfast; but Ruth and Jane Ann, with Tom Cameron and Bob Steele, well mounted on fresh ponies, joined the gang of cow punchers who forded the river at daybreak to bring in the strays.
The frightened cattle were spread over miles of the farther plain and it was a two days" task to gather them all in. Indeed, on the second evening the party of four young folk were encamped with Jib Pottoway and three of the other punchers, quite twenty miles from the river and in a valley that cut deeply into the mountain chain which sheltered the range from the north and west.
"It is over this way that the trail runs to Tintacker, doesn"t it, Jib?"
Ruth asked the Indian, privately.
"Yes, Miss. Such trail as there is can be reached in half an hour from this camp."
"Oh! I do so want to see that man who killed the bear, Jib," urged the girl from the Red Mill.
"Well, it might be done, if he"s over this way now," returned Jib, thoughtfully. "He is an odd stick-that"s sure. Don"t know whether he"d let himself be come up with. But--"
"Will you ride with me to the mines?" demanded Ruth, eagerly.
"I expect I could," admitted the Indian.
"I would be awfully obliged to you."
"I don"t know what Mr. Hicks would say. But the cattle are in hand again-and there"s less than a hundred here for the bunch to drive back.
They can get along without me, I reckon."
"And surely without me!" laughed Ruth.
And so it was arranged. The Indian and Ruth were off up the valley betimes the next morning, while the rest of the party started for the river, driving the last of the stray beeves ahead of them.
CHAPTER XVIII-A DESPERATE CASE
Jane Ann and Tom Cameron had both offered to accompany Ruth; but for a very good-if secret-reason Ruth did not wish any of her young friends to attend her at the meeting which she hoped would occur between her and the strange young man who (if report were true) had been hanging about the Tintacker properties for so long.
She had written Uncle Jabez after her examination with the lawyer of the mining record books at Bullhide; but she had told her uncle only that the claims had been transferred to the name of "John c.o.x." That was the name, she knew, that the vacuum cleaner agent had given Uncle Jabez when he had interested the miller in the mine. But there was another matter in connection with the name of "c.o.x" which Ruth feared would at once become public property if any of her young friends were present at the interview to which she now so eagerly looked forward.
Freckles, now as fresh as a pony could be, carried Ruth rapidly up the valley, and as the two ponies galloped side by side the girl from the Red Mill grew quite confidential with the Indian. She did not like Jib Pottoway as she did the foreman of the Bar Cross Naught ranch; but the Indian was intelligent and companionable, and he quite evidently put himself out to be entertaining.
As he rode, dressed in his typical cowboy costume, Jib looked the full-blooded savage he was; but his conversation smacked of the East and of his experiences at school. What he said showed that Uncle Sam does very well by his red wards at Carlisle.
Jib could tell her, too, much that was interesting regarding the country through which they rode. It was wild enough, and there was no human habitation in sight. Occasionally a jackrabbit crossed their trail, or a flock of birds flew whirring from the path before them. Of other life there was none until they had crossed the first ridge and struck into a beaten path which Jib declared was the old pack-trail to Tintacker.
The life they then saw did not encourage Ruth to believe that this was either a safe or an inhabited country. Freckles suddenly shied as they approached a bowlder which was thrust out of the hillside beside the trail. Ruth was almost unseated, for she had been riding carelessly. And when she raised her eyes and saw the object that had startled the pony, she was instantly frightened herself.
Crouching upon the summit of the rock was a lithe, tawny creature with a big, round, catlike head and flaming green eyes. The huge cat lashed its tail with evident rage and bared a very savage outfit of teeth.
"Oh! what"s that?" gasped Ruth, as Freckles settled back upon his haunches and showed very plainly that he had no intention of pa.s.sing the bowlder.