Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/156

146 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 drouth 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 retard the stampede; but many of the first-comers got over the shallow river and climbed upon the