The Lure of the Dim Trails, B. M. Bower [ebooks children's books free TXT] 📗

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.

“The Lazy Eight!” snapped Thurston, sure that the other had come with the stampede. Then, feeling the anger of temporary authority, “What in hell are you up to, letting your cattle run?” If Park could have heard him say that for Reeve-Howard!

Down the long length of the valley they swept, gathering to themselves other herds and other riders as incensed as were themselves. It is not pretty work, nor amusing, to gallop madly in the wake of a stampede at night, keeping up the stragglers and taking the chance of a broken neck with the rain to make matters worse.

Bob MacGregor sought Thurston with much shouting, and having found him they rode side by side. And always the thunder boomed overhead, and by the lightning flashes they glimpsed the turbulent sea of cattle fleeing, they knew not where or why, with blind fear crowding their heels.

The noise of it roused the camps as they thundered by; men rose up, peered out from bed-tents as the stampede swept past, cursed the delay it would probably make, hoped none of the boys got hurt, and thanked the Lord the tents were pitched close to the creek and out of the track of the maddened herds.

Then they went back to bed to wait philosophically for daylight.

When Sunfish, between flashes, stumbled into a shallow washout, and sent Thurston sailing unbeautifully over his head, Bob pulled up and slid off his horse in a hurry.

“Yuh hurt, Bud?” he cried anxiously, bending over him. For Thurston, from the very frankness of his verdant ignorance, had won for himself the indulgent protectiveness of the whole outfit; not a man but watched unobtrusively over his welfare—and Bob MacGregor went farther and loved him whole-heartedly. His voice, when he spoke, was unequivocally frightened.

Thurston sat up and wiped a handful of mud off his face; if it had not been so dark Bob would have shouted at the spectacle. “I'm 'kinda sorter shuck up like,”' he quoted ruefully. “And my nose is skinned, thank you. Where's that devil of a horse?”

Bob stood over him and grinned. “My, I'm surprised at yuh, Bud! What would your Sunday-school teacher say if she heard yuh? Anyway, yuh ain't got any call to cuss Sunfish; he ain't to blame. He's used to fellows that can ride.”

“Shut up!” Thurston commanded inelegantly. “I'd like to see you ride a horse when he's upside down!”

“Aw, come on,” urged Bob, giving up the argument. “We'll be plumb lost from the herd if we don't hustle.”

They got into their saddles again and went on, riding by sound and the rare glimpses the lightning gave them as it flared through the storm away to the east.

“Wet?” Bob sung out sympathetically from the streaming shelter of his slicker. Thurston, wriggling away from his soaked clothing, grunted a sarcastic negative.

The cattle were drifting now before the storm which had settled to a monotonous downpour. The riders—two or three men for every herd that had joined in the panic—circled, a veritable picket line without the password. There would be no relief ride out to them that night, and they knew it and settled to the long wait for morning.

Thurston took up his station next to Bob; rode until he met the next man, and then retraced his steps till he faced Bob again; rode until the world seemed unreal and far away, with nothing left but the night and the riding back and forth on his beat, and the rain that oozed through his clothes and trickled uncomfortably down inside his collar. He lost all count of time, and was startled when at last came gray dawn.

As the light grew brighter his eyes widened and forgot their sleep-hunger; he had not thought it would be like this. He was riding part way across one end of a herd larger than his imagination had ever pictured; three thousand cattle had seemed to him a multitude—yet here were more than twenty thousand, wet, draggled, their backs humped miserably from the rain which but a half hour since had ceased. He was still gazing and wondering when Park rode up to him.

“Lord! Bud, you're a sight! Did the bunch walk over yuh?” he greeted.

“No, only Sunfish,” snapped Thurston crossly. Time was when Philip Thurston would not have answered any man abruptly, however great the provocation. He was only lately getting down to the real, elemental man of him; to the son of Bill Thurston, bull-whacker, prospector, follower of dim trails. He rode silently back to camp with Bob, ate his breakfast, got into dry clothes and went out and tied his slicker deliberately and securely behind the cantle of his saddle, though the sun was shining straight into his eyes and the sky fairly