The Outdoor Chums After Big Game Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness

CHAPTER XXIV

A MYS­TERY SOLVED

Frank, af­ter that one spasm of alarm, grit­ted his teeth, and thought fast. He had heard the ranch­er, as well as the cow­boys, speak of the ter­rors of the stam­pede, when the cat­tle were in a fren­zy, through fear, and ut­ter­ly be­yond all man­age­ment.

He knew that fre­quent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced cow­men, caught in the rush of a thou­sand lum­ber­ing steers, had been ground to death un­der count­less hoofs. It was so in the old days, when bi­son dot­ted the plains of the great West.

Mount­ed on a good horse, one might hope to ride clear of the ad­vanc­ing avalanche of hoofs and horns. But his steed was lame, and hard­ly able to limp along. The sit­ua­tion was one cal­cu­lat­ed to arouse a boy as he had nev­er been awak­ened be­fore in all his life.

Frank jumped up­on the back of his horse. He knew in­stant­ly that his one hope must lie in get­ting clear of the im­mense herd; and that this could on­ly be done by ei­ther rid­ing faster than they were go­ing down the wide val­ley, or in mak­ing for the near­est hill­side, where trees would of­fer him a refuge.

He chose the lat­ter. Flight in a straight­away course was ut­ter­ly out of the ques­tion with a crip­ple be­tween his knees.

“Get up, Hec­tor! Do your pret­ti­est now!” he called to his horse.

The poor beast was try­ing his hard­est to run well, but mak­ing on­ly a pre­tense, af­ter all, since that lame leg kept him from speedy progress. Doubt­less Hec­tor, be­ing a cow pony, knew full well the na­ture of the per­il that men­aced them, and if it lay in his pow­er he would bear his young mas­ter to a point of safe­ty.

Frank's heart seemed to be in his throat as he leaned for­ward and lis­tened to the rapid­ly ap­proach­ing roar of hun­dreds up­on hun­dreds of hoofs, min­gled with the hor­rid clash­ing of horns. Added to this was the deep-​toned thun­der and the daz­zling flash­es of light­ning.

Once, when he looked to the left, he could see the mov­ing mass that was sweep­ing hor­ri­bly close. Af­ter that he res­olute­ly kept his at­ten­tion riv­et­ed in front, where the ridge loomed up against the dark­ened heav­ens.

Ev­ery­thing de­pend­ed up­on how far he was from the near­est trees. Sec­onds count­ed with Frank just then. The light­ning flashed ev­ery quar­ter of a minute, and yet it seemed to him that they were ages apart.

With his heart in his throat, as it seemed, he stared ahead, and wait­ed for the next flash to show him the worst. Un­less the trees were close by, his case seemed hope­less, for the main herd ap­peared to have pushed over to this side of the val­ley, un­for­tu­nate­ly, show­ing that he had picked the wrong course when he start­ed.

Hec­tor stum­bled more than once, and Frank feared he would be thrown. He even won­dered whether it would not be bet­ter for him to throw him­self to the ground while he had the chance, and trust to his own legs to car­ry him to safe­ty.

Then came the ea­ger­ly an­tic­ipat­ed flash. Hope sprang anew in his breast, for he had dis­cov­ered the trees close at hand. One more gal­lant ef­fort on the part of the crip­pled pony, and they man­aged to pass be­hind the out­posts of the tim­ber, just as the be­gin­ning of the ter­ri­ble rush­ing stam­pede swept by.

There Frank sat up­on his pony, breath­ing hard, and pat­ting the poor an­imal re­as­sur­ing­ly. He could hear the loud cries of the cow­boys and Mr. Ma­bie as they cir­cled about the ter­ri­fied cat­tle, try­ing by ev­ery means pos­si­ble to in­flu­ence them to mill; but in that gloom it was im­pos­si­ble to car­ry out the usu­al tac­tics, and by de­grees the sounds died away far down the val­ley.

Frank walked with his lame pony to the ranch house. Here he found his chums in a fright be­cause of his ab­sence. They were afraid he had been caught in the mad stam­pede and ground un­der the hoofs of the steers.

Mr. Ma­bie did not show up un­til long af­ter mid­night. The storm had passed away, and the sky cleared by that time. The boys were sit­ting up, wait­ing, none of them think­ing of seek­ing his bed.

“Hel­lo, Frank, my lad! I'm mighty glad to find you here, safe and sound. I saw your pony at the sta­ble, and that you had bound up his leg, show­ing a sprain. But I was afraid that some­thing more se­ri­ous had been the mat­ter. You don't know how re­lieved I was to see your horse; and Red­dy, too. The poor fel­low has been in a sweat with fear ev­er since the stam­pede broke out,” was the hearty way the ranch­er greet­ed Frank as he came bustling in.

“Oh, I was right in the line of the rush, but by clever work on the part of my pony man­aged to reach the trees be­fore they caught me. But what's the re­port about the cat­tle, sir?” asked Frank ea­ger­ly.

“The boys have halt­ed them about ten miles from here. Thanks to the storm stop­ping, and the an­imals get­ting leg weary, we man­aged to head them off. Lit­tle dam­age done, ex­cept to our feel­ings. These things hap­pen once in a while, and are re­al­ly un­avoid­able. Steers in a pan­ic are crazy; but then I sup­pose the same would ap­ply to hu­man be­ings, if all ac­counts are true that I read about the­ater fires and such things.”

He asked many ques­tions con­cern­ing Frank's ad­ven­ture.

“You just hap­pened to choose the wrong side, lad. Had you head­ed the oth­er way you would have had lit­tle trou­ble. The storm came from that quar­ter, and a cow­boy must have known that cat­tle al­ways run _away_ from the light­ning and rain. But for­tu­nate­ly you made the tim­ber, and; as the sub­ject is un­pleas­ant, we'll drop it for the present. Now get off to bed, the lot of you. In the morn­ing, if you want, I'll take you down with me, and show you how we drive a big herd.”

“I've got my last roll of films in the cam­era, and that would make a mighty fine set of pic­tures to fin­ish up with; but, oh! what wouldn't I give if I could have caught Frank, here, rid­ing for life on that crip­pled pony, and the stam­pede sweep­ing down on him!” said Will en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

“Talk to me about your cold-​blood­ed sav­ages! Does any­thing equal a crank with a cam­era, bent on snap­ping off ev­ery­thing that hap­pens?” mut­tered Jer­ry, shak­ing his head in re­al or as­sumed dis­gust.

“That is the fate of ev­ery ge­nius, to be mis­un­der­stood and mis­rep­re­sent­ed when ready to sac­ri­fice com­fort and ev­ery­thing to his art. But I am not the on­ly one who is a crank. I have known fel­lows so proud of their lungs, that night af­ter night they in­sist­ed on fill­ing the air mat­tress­es of the par­ty just to prove which could blow the hard­er; while the oth­er two mem­bers of the par­ty sat by and laughed.”

Frank chuck­led at hear­ing this, and both Bluff and Jer­ry looked dag­gers, for the shot hit home with them.

In the morn­ing the boys did ac­com­pa­ny the ranch­er down the val­ley. Frank showed them his course on the pre­vi­ous night, and they fol­lowed his line of trav­el un­til the trees were reached. Trail there was none, for hun­dreds of cloven hoofs had pound­ed the soil about that spot, show­ing how nar­row had been his es­cape.

The cow­boys were found to have the big herd well in hand. It was even then on the way back to its for­mer feed­ing ground. Some of the steers showed the ef­fects of the mad rush, in var­ious cuts from the horns of their fel­lows; and sev­er­al had tripped and gone down to death in the pan­ic, the herd tram­pling them in­to an un­rec­og­niz­able mass.

Of course, Will sat­is­fied his long­ing, and se­cured what pic­tures he want­ed.

“I'm hap­py in hav­ing car­ried out my plans. Won't the home folks stare when they see the panora­ma of views I've gath­ered!” he said ju­bi­lant­ly.

“I should think they would,” re­marked Jer­ry, shrug­ging his shoul­ders, “for you cer­tain­ly have a col­lec­tion of freak pic­tures, some of which would take the prize.”

“But all of this lot are gen­uine. No­body had to prance around a tree with a dead yel­low dog on his feet, pre­tend­ing to chase af­ter him,” as­sert­ed Will.

“Whose do­ing was that, eh? Tell me that! Didn't you just plead with me to make a fool of my­self, and to save you pain I con­sent­ed. I sup­pose I'll nev­er hear the end of that fool joke,” growled Jer­ry.

“Oh, yes, you will. It's all in the fam­ily. Oth­ers don't know the dog was dead when he had his pic­ture tak­en. They all say he looks as though about to snap a piece out of your leg. Now, I think we've just had a glo­ri­ous time of it up here, with noth­ing to mar our plea­sure,” re­marked Frank, the peace­mak­er.

“Ex­cept that mis­er­able job of mine in leav­ing my knife home,” sighed Bluff.

“Talk to me about that, will you! He hasn't for­got­ten it yet!” ex­claimed Jer­ry.

“I nev­er can. Hel­lo! Here comes Red­dy with a bag of mail, the last we'll get, I sup­pose, be­fore we go home. A let­ter for me? Now just keep your eyes to your­selves, fel­lows. I ad­mit it's from Nel­lie, but no doubt the dear girl is anx­ious about her broth­er Frank, and wants in­for­ma­tion from a thor­ough­ly re­li­able quar­ter.”

Bluff sought out a lone­some cor­ner of the big pi­az­za in front of the ranch house, and present­ly all hands were ab­sorbed in their let­ters. Sud­den­ly the oth­ers heard Bluff ut­ter an ex­cla­ma­tion, and looked up just in time to see him sprint in­to the build­ing.

“What d'ye sup­pose ails the fel­low?” asked Will.

“Give it up. He seemed to have a broad grin on his face, as though Nel­lie must have writ­ten some­thing es­pe­cial­ly sweet. But here he comes out again, danc­ing like a wild In­di­an. What's he wav­ing above his head, fel­lows?” said Frank.

“It's his lost hunt­ing-​knife, as sure as you live!” echoed Will.

“Just to think of it, boys! The beau­ty was in my clothes bag all the time, and I didn't know it! Nel­lie did it. She men­tions the fact in this let­ter, and says she was so afraid I'd hurt my­self with that knife, by ac­ci­dent, that she rolled it up in this new flan­nel shirt, which I've nev­er thought to put on as yet, and thrust it down at the bot­tom of my clothes bag. I nev­er thought to pull it out; and now that the big-​game hunt is over I get my trusty blade.”

“Tell me about that, will you! And you thought I was to blame,” re­marked Jer­ry.

“For which I beg your par­don. Af­ter all, per­haps no harm was done, and since Nel­lie on­ly did it from the best of mo­tives, why, I would be fool­ish to be an­gry.”

“Sen­si­ble for once,” ob­served Frank, wink­ing at the oth­ers.

“And so we will leave the ranch with­out the slight­est cloud on the hori­zon. Fel­lows, all I can say is we're a lucky lot of boys,” ob­served Will pos­itive­ly.