THE GREAT STAMPEDE.

“How is it going, Jack? All quiet?”

Walt Phelps paused in his ride around the herd to address his chum.

“Yes, everything is going splendidly, Walt. Dynamite’s a real cow–pony.”

“No doubt about that. Well, I’ll ride on; we must keep circling the herd.”

“You’re right. They seem a bit restless.”

Walt rode off with a word of farewell, while Jack flicked Dynamite with the quirt and proceeded in the opposite direction.

The time was about midnight the night following Jack’s little argument with Dynamite. Since nine o’clock the Border Boys had been on duty with the Reeves herd. Under the bright stars the cattle were visible only as a black, evershifting mass, round and round which the boys, Bud and two cow–punchers circled unceasingly. Some of the animals were feeding, others standing up or moving about. The air reeked of cattle. Their warm breaths ascended into the cool night in a nebulous cloud of steam.

From far off came the sound of a voice singing, not unmusically, that classic old ballad of the Texas cowman:

“Lie quietly now, cattle,
And please do not rattle,
Or else we will ‘mill’ you,
As sure as you’re born.

A long time ago,
At Ranch Silver Bow,
I’d a sweetheart and friends,
On the River Big Horn“

Jack pulled up his pony for a minute and listened to the long drawn, melancholy cadence. It was the cow–puncher’s way of keeping the cattle quiet and easy–minded. Steers at night are about as panicky creatures as can be imagined. The rustle of the night wind in the sagebrush, the sudden upspringing of a jackrabbit, the whinnying of a pony, all these slight causes have been known to start uncontrollable “stampedes“ that have been costly both to life and property.

The night was intensely still. Hardly a breath of wind stirred. Except for the occasional bellow of a restless steer or the never–ending refrain of Bud’s song, the plains on the border of the Rio Grande were as silent as a country churchyard.

Jack resumed his ride. He began whistling. It was not a cheerful tune he chose. “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground,” was his selection. Somehow it seemed to the lad that such a tune was suited to the night and to his task.

Jack’s course led him to the south of the herd, between the main body of cattle and the Rio Grande. He kept a bright lookout as he passed along the river banks. He knew that if trouble was coming, it was going to come from that direction. Almost unconsciously he felt his holsters to see if his weapons were all right.

Once he paused to listen. It was at a spot right on the river bank that he made his halt. He was just about to ride on again, whistling his lugubrious tune, when something odd caught his eye and set his heart to thumping violently.

A head covered with a white hood containing two eyeholes had suddenly appeared above the river bank. The next instant a score more appeared. All wore the white hoods with the same ghastly eyeholes, giving them the appearance of so many skulls.

Greatly startled and alarmed, Jack yet realized that the figures that had appeared so suddenly must be those of cattle–stealing Mexican rebels and that they had adopted the hoods with the idea of scaring the superstitious cowboys. Hardly had he arrived at this conclusion before the hooded horsemen rushed up the bank. They aimed straight for the boy.

Instantly Jack’s hand sought his holster.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

It was the three shots agreed upon as a signal of trouble. From far back on the eastern side of the herd came an answer. Jack had just time to hear it when the hooded band swept down upon him. He felt bullets whiz past his ear and then, without exactly knowing how it happened, he was riding for his life, crouched low on Dynamite’s withers.

Off to the north, east and west other six–shooters cracked and flashed. The signal of alarm was being passed around rapidly. Jack was riding for his life toward the west side of the herd. Behind him pressed one of the hooded horsemen. All the others had been distanced by the fleet–footed Dynamite. But this man behind him clung on like grim death.

From time to time he fired, but at the pace they were going his aim was naturally poor and none of the bullets went near the fleeing boy on the buckskin pony.

The air roared in Jack’s ears as he dashed along. All at once he became conscious of another roar, the roar of hundreds of terrified steers. Horns crashed and rattled. Startled bellows arose. Then off to the east came more firing. Jack judged by this that most of the hooded band had gone off in that direction and were now engaged in fighting with Bud and the rest of the cattle watchers.

The next instant the lad became conscious of a thunderous sound that seemed to shake the earth. It was the roar and rush of thousands of hoofs.

“The cattle have stampeded!” gasped Jack to himself, and the next instant:

“The firing to the east has started them off; and I am right in their path.”

He swung his pony in an effort to cut off part of the herd. But through the darkness they thundered down on him like a huge overpowering wave of hoofs and horns. Jack fired with both his six–shooters, hoping to turn the stampede; but he might as well have saved his cartridges. No power on earth can stop stampeding cattle till they get ready to quit.

Jack was in the direst peril. But he did not lose his head. He swung Dynamite around once more and urged him forward. It was a race for life with the maddened cattle. He had lost all thought of the hooded rider who had pursued him so closely. His sole idea now was to escape alive from the stampede behind him. Had he dared, he would have tried to cut across the face of it. But he knew that he stood every chance of being trapped should he do so. He therefore decided to trust to Dynamite’s fleetness and sure–footedness. It made him shudder to think what would befall him if the pony happened to get his foot in a gopher hole and stumble.

A Texas steer in a stampede can travel every bit as fast as a pony, and it was not long before the steers were in a crescent–shaped formation, with Jack riding for his life in about the center of the half moon. On and on they thundered in the mad race. To Jack it felt as if they were beginning to go down hill, but he was not certain. Nor had he the least idea of the direction in which he was going. He bent all his faculties on keeping ahead of that hoofed and horned wave behind him.

Dynamite went like the wind. But even his muscles began to flag under the merciless strain after a time. He felt the effects of his strenuous lesson of the morning. Jack was forced to ply quirt and spur to keep him on his gait. But the signs that the pony was playing out dismayed the boy. His life depended on Dynamite’s staying powers, and they were only too plainly diminishing.

The slope down which they were dashing was a fairly steep one, which accounted for Jack’s feeling the grade. It led into a broad, sandy–bottomed, dry water course, or “arroyo” as they are called in the west. But of this, of course, Jack was unaware.

All at once Jack felt Dynamite plunge into a thick patch of grease–wood. The pony slowed up as he encountered the obstruction, but Jack’s quirt and spur urged him into it. But that momentary pause had been nearly fatal. Jack could now almost feel the hot breath of the leading cattle. Despite his grit and courage, both of sterling quality, Jack’s heart gave an uncomfortable bound. He felt his scalp tighten at the narrowness of his escape. But still he urged Dynamite on. Luckily he wore stout leather “chaps,” or the brush would have torn his limbs fearfully.

Dynamite tore on, with seemingly undiminished valor, but Jack knew that the end was near.

“Only a few yards more, and then————” he thought, when he felt a different sensation.

It filled him with alarm. He was dropping downward through the air. Down he plunged, while behind him came the thunder of the maddened steers.

“Good heavens! Is this the end?” was the thought that flashed through the boy’s mind in that terrible fraction of time when he felt himself and his pony dropping through space.

The next instant he felt the pony hit the ground under him. Like a stone from a slingshot, Jack was catapulted out of the saddle. He landed on the ground some distance from the pony. He was shaken and bruised, but he was up in a flash. In another instant the steers would be upon him. He would be crushed to a pulp under their hoofs unless he found some means of escape.

“If I don’t do something quick, it’s good–bye for me,” he told himself.

In frantic haste he looked about for some means of saving himself. All at once he spied through the darkness the black outlines of a cottonwood tree. In a flash his plan was formed. He slipped behind the trunk of the cottonwood, using it as a shield between himself and the oncoming cattle.

Hardly had he slipped behind his refuge when an agonized cry came to his ears, the cry of a human being in mortal terror. Jack peered from behind his tree trunk. As he did so the form of a man rolled almost to his feet and lay still.

With a thrill Jack recognized the white hood the figure wore and knew it must be the hooded horseman who had pursued him. Like himself, the man had been caught in the stampede and been thrown from his horse almost at the foot of the tree. Exerting all his strength, Jack pulled the man into shelter behind the tree scarcely a second before the crazed steers were upon them. In their blind frenzy of terror many of them dashed headlong into the tree, stunning and killing themselves. But the main herd swept by on both sides, leaving Jack and the unconscious man in a little haven of safety behind the tree trunk.

Jack found himself wedged in between two barricades of bellowing, galloping steers, and for his deliverance from what had seemed certain death a few minutes before he offered up a fervent prayer of thanks.

For some time the rush continued and then thinned out to a few stragglers. At last Jack thought it safe to emerge from behind his tree. In front of it lay several dead cattle, their brains knocked out by the force with which they had collided with the cottonwood. A few injured animals limped about moaning piteously. Some of them were so badly injured that Jack, who could not bear to see an animal suffer, put them out of their misery with his six–shooter.

It was now time to turn his attention to the hooded man. The fellow had been stunned when he was thrown from his horse; but he was now stirring and groaning. Jack bent over him and pulled off his hood. As he did so he staggered back with an amazed exclamation.

The face the starlight revealed was that of Alvarez, the man whose destiny had been so oddly linked with Jack’s!

“Where am I? What has happened?” exclaimed the man in Spanish as he opened his eyes.

“’You have been engaged in the despicable work of cattle stealing, Alvarez,” spoke Jack sternly. “If you had not been thrown at my very feet, you would have perished miserably under the hoofs of the herd you planned to steal.”

At the first sound of Jack’s voice Alvarez had staggered painfully to his feet. Now he uttered a cry.

“It is you, SeÑor Merrill! I thought you were miles from here.”

“Well, I am not, as you see. Are you badly hurt?”

“I do not know. I think my arm is broken. It pains fearfully.”

“I will examine it by daylight. Are you armed?”

“I was, seÑor, but I lost my pistol in that fearful ride before the stampede.”

The man’s tone was cringing, whining almost. Jack felt nothing but contempt for him. He held that the Mexican revolutionists were about as much in the right as the government troops; but cattle stealing on the Border is a serious offense and Jack Merrill was a rancher’s son. He made no reply to Alvarez, but, telling him to remain where he was, he went off to see if he could find some water to bathe the man’s injuries, for, besides his injured arm, he had a nasty cut on the head.

He did not find water and was returning to the tree rather downcast, when through the darkness ahead of him he saw something moving. The object was not a steer, he was sure of that. He moved cautiously toward it, his heart beating with a hope he hardly dared to entertain.

But at last suspicion grew to certainty.

“It’s my pony! It’s Dynamite!” he breathed, not daring to make a noise lest the pony take fright and dash off.

Cautiously he crept up on the little animal. He now saw as he drew closer that another horse was beside it. He had no doubt that this latter beast was the one Alvarez had ridden. How the horses had escaped death or serious injury Jack could not imagine; but escape it they had, although they both stood dejectedly with heads hung down and heaving flanks.

“Whoa, Dynamite! Whoa, boy!” whispered Jack, moving up to the broncho with outstretched hand.

Dynamite stirred nervously. He pricked up his ears. Jack crept forward once more. In this way he got within a few feet of the pony. Then he decided to make a dash for it. He flung himself forward, grabbed the pommel of the saddle and swung himself on to Dynamite’s back. With a squeal of fear the pony started bucking furiously.

“Buck all you want,” laughed Jack. “I’ve got you now and, by ginger, if I can do it, I mean to get back those cattle, too.”

Dynamite soon quieted down and then Jack set himself to catching the horse Alvarez had ridden. This was not an easy task, but the brute was not so fiery as Dynamite, and at last Jack got him. The dawn was just flushing up in the east when Jack, leading the Mexican’s horse, rode back toward the cottonwood tree. Alvarez, looking pale and old, sat where Jack had left him.

He glanced up as the boy approached, but said nothing. Jack hitched the horses and then examined the Mexican’s arm. He decided that it was not broken, only badly sprained. He concluded, therefore, that the Mexican was quite able to perform the task he had laid out for him.

“Get on your horse, Alvarez,” he ordered.

“Si, seÑor,” rejoined the swarthy Alvarez without comment.

Only when he was mounted and Jack told him to ride in front of him, did he inquire what was to be done with him.

“You are going to help me drive those cattle back first,” said Jack grimly. “Then we’ll decide on what comes next.”

In silence they rode up the far bank of the arroyo and the plain lay spread out before them. Jack could not restrain a cry of joy as in the distance he saw a dark mass closely huddled. It was the missing band of steers.

“Now, Alvarez,” he warned sternly, “what will happen to you may depend on just how we restore his property to Mr. Reeves. Do you understand?”

“Si, seÑor,” nodded the man, whose spirit appeared completely broken.

They rode up cautiously. But the steers appeared to be as quiet as so many sheep and merely eyed them as they approached. The animals were in pitiful shape after their frantic gallop and one look at them showed Jack that he would have no trouble in driving them back to the home ranch once they were got moving.

Keeping a sharp eye on Alvarez, he ordered the Mexican to begin “milling” the steers, that is, riding them around and around till they were bunched in a compact mass. This done, the drive began. At times Jack hardly knew how he kept in his saddle. He was sick, faint, and thirsty, with a burning thirst. The dust from the trampling steers enveloped him, stinging nostrils and eyes, and, besides all this, he dared not take his eyes off Alvarez for an instant.

The boy surveyed himself. He was a mass of scratches and bruises, his shirt was ripped and hung in shreds, his chaperajos alone remained intact. Even his saddle was badly torn, and, as for the poor buckskin, he was in as bad shape as his master.

“Well, I am a disreputable looking object,” thought the boy. “The Rangers wouldn’t own me if they could see me now.”

********

It was late afternoon at the Reeves ranch when Bud and the two boys rode in with the news that they could find no trace of the missing cattle. Nor, of course, had they any news of Jack. Mr. Reeves was much downcast at this, almost as much so as Walt and Ralph. Yet somehow the two latter felt sure that Jack would come out all right.

They had not had an easy night of it, either. The battle to the eastward of the herd that had started the stampede had resulted in a flesh wound for Walt and a bad cut on the hand for Ralph. But the boys and the cow–punchers had managed to make prisoners of ten of the hooded Mexicans, so that they felt they had not done a bad night’s work. If only they had possessed a clew to Jack’s fate, they would, in fact, have been jubilant. Ralph’s behavior during the fight had quite won him back the respect he had lost by his poor exhibition with the rope. The Border Boys were declared “the grittiest ever” by every puncher on the range.

The ten prisoners were confined in the barn, but they all denied vigorously having seen anything of Jack. They confessed that their raid had been made for the purpose of getting beef for the rebel army, which had been practically starved out by the government troops.

Bud had just dismounted by the corral and Walt and Ralph were dispiritedly doing the same when Mr. Reeves uttered a shout and pointed to the far southwest.

“Wonder what that is off there, that cloud of dust!” he exclaimed.

“I’ll get the glasses, boss,” declared Bud.

He dived into the house and speedily reappeared with a pair of powerful binoculars such as most stockmen use.

Mr. Reeves applied them to his eyes and gazed long and carefully at the distant object that had attracted his attention.

“What is it?” demanded Bud.

“I don’t know yet. I can’t see for dust. But I’m pretty sure it’s a band of cattle.”

Walt and Ralph held their breaths.

“Our cattle?” almost whispered Bud, in a tense voice.

“I can’t be sure. It might be any band of steers crossing the state. Tell you what, Bud, saddle the big sorrel for me and we’ll go and find out.”

Ten minutes later the band of horsemen was riding at top speed toward the distant moving objects. As they drew closer it was seen that they were unmistakably cattle. All at once Bud gave a sharp cry.

“Boss, they’re our cows. See the big muley steer in front? That’s old Abe. I’d know him among a thousand.”

“By George, Bud, you’re right! But who can be driving them?”

He was interrupted by a mighty shout from Ralph Stetson.

“It’s Jack!” he cried.

“It is the broncho bustin’ Tenderfoot as sure as you’re a foot high!” bawled out Bud.

“But who’s that with him?” demanded Walt.

“Dunno; looks like a greaser,” growled Bud, who had no liking for the “brown brothers” across the Border.

And then, at the risk of starting another stampede, the cavalcade dashed forward, waving their hats and yelling like wild Indians.

Mr. Reeves rode right down on Jack.

“Boy, you’re a wonder. How did you do it? No; stop; don’t tell me now. I can see you’re about tuckered out. How are you?”

“Roasted out,” rejoined Jack with an attempt at a smile. But his voice was hoarse as a crow’s and his lips were too baked and cracked to smile naturally.

“Great heavens, boy, you’ve been through an awfully tough ordeal, I can see that. But who is this personage here?”

Mr. Reeves indicated Alvarez, who shrank under his gaze.

Jack forced his voice out of his parched throat.

“That is my assistant driver, Mr. Reeves,” he said. “We have had a good deal of talk as we came along and he tells me that he has a great longing to go back to his own country and stay there. He knows what it means if he comes back across the Border again, don’t you, Alvarez?”

“Si, SeÑor Merrill,” stammered the Mexican while Bud glowered at him.

“There’s something behind all this, Jack, that I can partly guess at,” declared Mr. Reeves, “but if you really want him to go, let him go.”

“You hear?” croaked Jack in Spanish.

“Si, seÑor.”

“Then go.”

The Mexican wheeled his horse, doffed his peaked hat in a graceful wave and in a loud, clear voice shouted:

“Adios, seÑors!”

He struck his spurs home and brought down his quirt. His horse sprang forward. Straight for the Rio Grande he rode and vanished over its northern bank. Five minutes later he was off American soil. On the opposite bank he paused once more, wheeled his horse and waved his sombrero in token of farewell. Then he vanished, so far as the boys were concerned, forever.

“Now, forward,” cried Mr. Reeves. “Bud, you hold the cattle here till I send out some boys to help you bring them in. Jack, you come with us at once. You need doctoring up.”

“Can’t I stay and bring the cattle in?” pleaded Jack.

“Son,” said the rancher in a deep voice, “you’ve done your duty; mine begins now. I haven’t heard your story yet, but I’ll bet my last dollar that you’ve done a big thing out there, and that the Rangers will be mighty proud of their boy recruits.”

And then they rode forward to the ranch house and food and drink, and later to the unfolding of Jack’s story.

As Mr. Reeves had prophesied, the Rangers were proud of their young comrades. And not only the circle of Rangers, but the whole state of Texas rang with their praises until the boys were afraid to look at a newspaper. As for Jack’s generous action in letting Alvarez go free, none but Captain Atkinson, Mr. Reeves and the Border Boys themselves knew of it, though Bud suspected, or “suspicioned” as he called it.

A few days later the revolution was crushed, and they heard afterward that Alvarez had died fighting bravely for what he deemed the right cause. A few days later, too, the boys had to leave their kind Texan friends and wend their way homeward.

And now we, too, have reached the parting of the ways so far as this part of the Border Boys’ adventures is concerned. Here, for a time, we will take leave of our young friends, wishing them well till we meet them again in further stirring adventures. What befell them after leaving Texas and how they acquitted themselves in scenes and situations as exciting and thrilling as any through which they have yet passed, will all be related in the next volume of this series, which will be called: “The Border Boys in the Canadian Rockies.”

The End.