Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/179

 night wind and the rain from the lips of some singer watching beside his straining herd.

It was plain to the schooled ear of Hartwell that the leaven of stampede was working in the dull brains of those cattle, evident that it needed but some little thing to set them off, as the shifting of a rock precipitates the avalanche. But a man on a horse was hardly the needed element in their almost complete panic, for they were accustomed to looking to men on horses for protection, assurance, guidance, through all the adventures of the long road and the range. A coyote might do it; a bat flying in the face of an animal might do it; but it was a long chance against a man on a horse.

Texas was ready and willing enough on his own account to make as much trouble for the southern drovers, and cause them as much damage as he could to balance in some measure the tortures he had suffered at their hands. The night favored any reprisal that he might be able to devise. It was so dark there was no sky-line; the cattle floundering up from their uneasy rest in front of his horse, or moving aside, almost indifferent to his presence in their steaming midst, were indistinct the length of his horse's neck, invisible a few feet away.

He rode through the herd, keeping the wind in his face to hold his direction, for without it he