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 darker night. As he rode he felt the pressure against his legs of the bodies of cattle which he could not see. Great perils would lie ahead of and around a man riding blindly with a stampeding herd that night. Ordinarily it was a situation of aggravated dangers, but in such darkness the risks were multiplied many times. The first unseen ravine would be a trap, the first wash across the prairie—some of them with banks twenty feet deep—would mean a trampled, mangled, smothering death.

But all this had to be faced and dared, for his honor's sake. He was there to stampede that herd, or a part of it at least—he had very little hope that all of it could be drawn into the flight—and prove his loyalty to the men who had put their interests into his trust. He could hear the cowboy talking to his horse between snatches of his song, and he knew that it was an anxious hour for that lone sentinel there in that strange black land.

Here the cattle were milling in their distracted, senseless way, held back by the herder, whose voice and presence partly assured them, but could not entirely calm their fears. Texas had difficulty in forcing his way among them, his aim being to reach the outer edge.

Suddenly his horse, floundering impatiently through the dull stream of beasts, landed almost on