Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/183

 urged his horse forward, and that creature, scornful of the cattle in his superior wisdom, and out of patience with their indifference to its efforts to force a passage, bit them in the little charges that it now and then had room to make.

Adding to this stimulation, Texas began beating them with his heavy wet hat, careless now about keeping his location or his intentions concealed. The cowboy was looking for him, cursing and yelling. Near at hand others were whooping and shooting, and out of the herd the confused noise of clashing horns, hoofs beating the sodden earth, rose and grew with every breath.

There was no longer any lowing, nor that indescribable sad moaning such as they make before they lift their voices in the long plaint of homesickness. Panic was among them now; they were snorting to be away. Confusion, blackness, the scent of rain-wet, steaming beasts; a struggle, a scramble of his horse's feet as if it lunged up a steep bank, and Hartwell broke through. His horse ran on, unable to check itself under the force that it had put into its labor to get clear, and after it came the point of the stampede.

Hartwell heard the sudden change in the slow soft trampling of hoofs. It rose suddenly into a muffled roar, which grew like flood water, filling the night. He rode hard ahead of the stampede,