The Pony Rider Boys in Texas

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"Use your gun!" shouted Big-foot. "Burn plenty of powder in front of
their noses if they press you too closely!"

He had forgotten that the lad did not carry a gun, nor did he realize
that he was sending the boy into a situation of the direst peril.

Tad, by this time, had a pretty fair idea of the danger of the task that
had been assigned to him. But he was not the boy to flinch in an
emergency.

Pressing the rowels of his spurs against the flanks of the reaching pony
and urging the little animal on with his voice, Tad swept obliquely
along in front of the herd.

Now and then a flash of lightning would show him a solid mass of cattle
hurling themselves upon him. At such times the lad would swerve his
mount to the left a little and shoot ahead for a few moments, in an
attempt to get sufficient lead of them to enable him to reach the right
or upper end of the line.

In this way Tad Butler soon gained the outside of the leaders. By
dropping back and working up the line, he pointed them in to the best of
his ability.

The lightning got into his eyes as he strained them wide open to take
account of his surroundings. He would pass a hand over his face
instinctively, as if to brush the flash away, groping for an instant for
his bearings after he had done so.

He remembered what Bob Stallings had said in speaking of a stampede.

"Keep them straight and hold them together. That's all you can do. You
can't stop them," the foreman had said.

The lad was doing this now as best he could, yet he wondered that none
of the cowmen had come to his assistance.

Again and again did Tad Butler throw his pony against the great
unreasoning wave on the right of the line, and again and again was he
buffeted back, only to return to the battle with desperate courage.

All at once the lad found himself almost surrounded by the beasts. A
lightning flash had shown him this at the right time. Had it been a few
seconds later Tad must have gone down under their irresistible rush.

The pony, seeming to realize the danger fully as much as did its rider,
bent every muscle in its little body to bear itself and rider to safety.

Yet try as they would, they were unable to get back to the right point
to take up the turning work again.

The cattle had closed in about the lad in almost a crescent formation,
Tad's position being about the center of it.

"Whoa-oo-ope! Whoa-oo-ope!" shouted Tad, taking up the cry that he had
heard the cowboys utter earlier in the stampede.

His voice was lost in the roar of the storm and the thunder of the
rushing herd.

Tad realized that there was only one thing left for him to do. That was
to keep straight ahead and ride. He would have to ride fast, too, if he
were to keep clear of the long-legged Mexican cattle.

They were descending a gradual slope that led down into a broad, sandy
arroyo where still stood the rotting stumps of oak and cottonwood trees
that once lined the ancient water course.

By this time the main herd lay to the rear nearly two miles, the cattle
having separated into several bands. However, the lad was unaware of
this.

Suddenly, in the darkness, rider and pony crashed into a dense mesquite
thicket.

There was not a second to hesitate, for they were already in. The
leading cattle tore in after Tad with a crashing of brush and a rattle
of horns--sounds that sent a chill up and down his spine in spite of all
the lad's sturdy courage.

The herd was closing in on him, leaving the boy no alternative but to go
through the thicket himself, and to go fast at that.

Tad formed his plan instantly. He made up his mind to ride it out and
let his pony have its own way. Yet the boy never expected to come
through the mesquite thicket without being swept from his pony and
trampled under the feet of the savage steers.

He gave the pony a free rein, clutched both cantle and pommel of the
saddle and braced himself for the shock that he was sure would come. The
cow pony tore through the growth at a fearful pace, while the boy's
clothes hung in shreds where they had been raked by the mesquite thorns.

All at once Tad felt himself going through the air with a different
motion. He realized that he was falling. The pony had stumbled and with
its rider was plunging headlong to the ground. The cattle were
thundering down upon them.

CHAPTER X

A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE

"That settles me!" said the lad bitterly.

The next instant he hit the ground with a force that partially stunned
him. His pony, whose nose had ploughed the ground, was up like a flash.
Realizing its danger, the little animal gave a snort and plunged into
the mesquite, leaving its rider lying on the ground with a fair prospect
of being crushed to death beneath, the hoofs of the stampeding steers.

Tad recovered himself almost instantly. His first instinct was to run,
in the hope of overtaking the fleeing pony.

"That'll be sure death," he told himself.

The cattle were almost upon him. If he were to do anything to save
himself he would have to act quickly.

It came to him suddenly that what the pony had fallen over might be made
to act as a shield for himself. The boy sprang forward, groping in the
dark amid the roaring of the storm and the thunder of the maddened herd.
His hands touched a log. He found that it had so rotted away on one side
as to make a partial shell. It was not enough to admit a human body, but
it served as a sort of screen for him. Tad burrowed into it as far as he
could get.

"I hope there are no snakes in here," he thought, snuggling close.

Yet between the two he preferred to take his chances with snakes, at
that moment, rather than with the crazy steers.

The leaders of the steers cleared the log, just grazing it with their
hind feet as they went over, sending a shower of dust and decayed wood
over Tad.

The cattle immediately following the leaders did not fare so well. A
number of them, leaping over the log at the same instant, fell headlong
as the pony had done before them. However, the steers were less
fortunate. Before they were able to scramble to their feet, others
following had tumbled over on top of them, and Tad Butler found himself
wedged in behind a barricade of bellowing cattle, whose flying hoofs
made him hastily burrow deeper into the decayed log.

This obstruction soon caused the main body to swerve. Their solid front
had been broken at last, yet they continued on as wildly as before,
bellowing and horning one another in their mad flight.

The rain, which had held back during the brilliant electrical display,
now came down in drenching torrents, packing down the sand of the plain
which the wind, before, had picked up and tossed into the air in dense
clouds.

Tad was soaked to the skin almost instantly. But he did not mind this.
His thought, now, was to get out of his perilous position and follow the
herd.

The cattle that had fallen so near him, were now one by one extricating
themselves from their predicament, each one giving vent to a bellow as
it did so and dashing after its companions.

The lad was not slow to crawl from his hiding place the moment he
considered it safe to do so. As it was, he got away before the snarl of
steers had entirely unraveled itself.

What to do Tad did not know. His pony gone, and, with no sense of
direction left, he was in sore straits.

"I'll follow the cattle," he decided. "Besides, it's my business to stay
with them if I can. I'll do it as long as I've got a leg to stand on,"
he declared, cautiously working around those of the cattle that were
leaping from the heap and running away.

The mesquite was still full of stragglers dashing wildly here and there.
In the darkness, the boy was really in great danger. There were no large
trees behind which he could dodge to get out of the way of the animals
as they rushed toward him, nor was he able to see them when they did get
near him. He was obliged to judge of their direction by sound alone.
This was made doubly difficult since the rain had begun to fall, for
now, young Butler could scarcely distinguish one sound from another.

Once a plunging steer hit the lad a glancing blow with its great side,
hurling him into a thicket of bristling mesquite. The thorns gashed his
face and body, almost stripping the remnants of his tattered clothes
from him.

Still, with indomitable pluck, the lad sprang to his feet, stubbornly
working his way through the thicket.

He came out finally on the other side and floundering about for a time,
found himself once more on a plain, which he had observed in the light
from a flash of lightning extended away indefinitely. Off to the west,
he plainly made out a large body of cattle. Apparently they were now
headed to the northwest.

It was almost a hopeless task for one to expect to be able to overhaul
them on foot, and even were he to do so he could accomplish nothing
after reaching them.

But Tad kept on just the same, with the rain beating him until he was
gasping for breath, the lightning playing about him in lingering sheets
of yellow flame.

He had run on in this way for fully half an hour when a flash disclosed
an object to the right of him. It was moving, but Tad was sure it was
not a steer.

The boy changed his course somewhat and trotted along with more caution,
shading his eyes with a hand that he might make out what it was when the
next flash came.

"It's a pony!" he shouted. "It's my pony!"

The animal was standing with lowered head, gazing straight at the boy.

Tad whistled and called with a long drawn "Whoa-oo-ope!"

The pony made no move to approach, nor did it attempt to run away. But
Tad had had experience enough with the cow ponies by this time to know
that the animal was not likely to stand still and permit him to come up
with it. At any moment it was likely to kick its heels in the air and
dash away.

"I've got to make a run for him," decided the lad, stepping cautiously
forward, making a slight detour that he might come up from the animal's
left instead of approaching him directly from the front.

After having done this, Tad waited, crouching low. He chuckled to
himself as he observed that the pony was looking straight ahead, not
having discovered his master's new position.

The boy was not more than two rods from him.

Measuring the distance with his eyes, he waited until the lightning
flash died out, then ran on his toes straight for where he believed the
horse was standing. It was Tad's purpose to grab the animal about the
neck.

Instead he ran straight against the pony's side with a resounding bump.

The pony uttered a grunt of fear, springing straight up into the air.

"Whoa, Barney!" coaxed the lad. But Barney had no idea of obeying the
command at that moment. It is doubtful if, in the fright of the sudden
collision, he even understood what was wanted of him.

Tad's hands had missed the neck. Instead they had grasped the pommel and
cantle of the saddle, so that when the pony leaped, Tad's feet were
jerked clear of the ground.

As the animal came down on all fours, Tad threw himself into the saddle.

Instantly the pony's back arched, and, with a cough, it went off into a
series of bucks, twisting, whirling and making desperate efforts to
unseat its rider.

For the first few minutes the lad could do no more than hold on. At the
first opportunity, however, he let go of the pommel long enough to reach
forward and pick up the reins, which hung well down on the pony's neck.

"Now, buck, Barney, you rascal!" shouted Tad gleefully, giving a gentle
pressure with the spurs.

Barney at once decided to stop bucking.

Tad clucked to him and shook out the reins.

Away they went on the trail of the cattle, heading to the northwest,
where the lad could plainly see them running.

At the pace the pony was going they were able to overhaul the herd in a
short time. Tad had clung to his quirt when he was thrown. Reaching the
head of the line of charging beasts, he rode straight at the leaders,
bringing the quirt again and again across the noses of those nearest to
him. This treatment served to deflect the line a little; yet, try as he
would, Tad seemed unable to turn the bunch toward home. Yet he kept
steadily at his work, "milling" the steers, as the turning process is
called, until pony and rider were well-nigh exhausted.

Tad knew he was a long way from camp and alone with the herd. After a
time the animals seemed to him to be slackening their speed. Discovering
this, he untied the slicker or rubber blanket from the saddle cantle,
and, riding against the leaders again, flaunted the slicker in their
faces, shouting and urging at the same time.

"If I had a gun I believe I could stop them right away," he said. "But
I'm going to turn them if it's the last thing I ever do."

The fury of the storm was abating and the lightning flashes were
becoming less frequent.

Now that he had succeeded in turning the point of the herd, it proved
much easier to keep them under control. Besides, it gave both boy and
pony a breathing spell. The hard riding was not now necessary.

Round and round young Butler kept the herd circling for nearly an hour.
The steers, moving more and more slowly, Tad concluded wisely that they
were growing tired of this and that they would quiet down. His judgment
proved correct. The storm passed. He could hear it roaring off to the
northwest where the lightning flamed up in intermittent flashes.

"Wonder what time it is," queried Tad aloud, searching about in his
clothes for his watch.

"Pshaw, I've lost it," he exclaimed. "Well, it is not so much of a loss
after all. I paid only a dollar for it and I've had more than a dollar's
worth of fun to-night. I wonder what I look like. I must be a sight."

It now lacked only an hour of dawn, but, of course, the boy did not know
this. In the darkness preceding the dawn he had no idea of the size of
the bunch of cattle that he had led out over the plain. He knew it must
be large, however.

At last daybreak was at hand, the landscape and the herd being faintly
outlined in the thin morning light. Tad was surprised to find that he
had milled the cattle into a compact bunch. Now the boy began galloping
around the herd, speaking words of encouragement to the animals as he
went, whistling and trying to sing, until finally he was rewarded by
seeing some of them begin to graze.

"I've done it," shouted Tad gleefully. "I've bagged the whole bunch. I
wonder what Mr. Stallings will say to that. I don't believe Big-foot
Sanders could beat that. The next question is, where am I? I don't know.
I guess I'm lost for sure. But I've got lots of company."

To add to his perplexity, a light fog was drifting over the plain from
the southeast, shutting out what little view there was in the early
morning light.

The cattle were now grazing as contentedly as if they never had known
such an experience as a stampede. It was useless, however, to attempt to
drive them, for he might be leading them away from camp instead of
toward it.

Tad was wet and hungry, and now that he was able to get a look at
himself, he discovered that his belt was about the only whole thing left
of his equipment. Scarcely a vestige of his trousers remained; his shirt
hung in ribbons, his hat was lost and his leggins had been stripped off
clean.

Tad laughed heartily as he surveyed himself.

"Well, I am a sight! I guess I shall need a whole new harness before I
drive cattle much more."

All he could do now was to wait for the sun to rise. Then, he might be
able to determine something about his position.

But the sun was a long time in making its appearance that day.

CHAPTER XI

THE VIGIL ON THE PLAINS

"I wish I had a drink of water," said Tad after some hours had passed.
Instead of drifting away, the fog had become more dense. He could see
only part of the herd now. However, as they showed no disposition to
run, Tad felt no concern in that direction. He was obliged to ride
around the herd more frequently than would otherwise have been the case,
in order to keep the straying ones well rounded in.

The hours passed slowly, and with their passing Tad's appetite grew. He
sat on his pony, enviously watching the cattle filling their stomachs
with the wet grass.

"I almost wish I were a steer," declared Tad. "I could at least satisfy
my hunger."

Then the lad once more took up his weary round.

Off to the eastward, all was still excitement. The herd had broken up
into many parts during the stampede and the cowmen were having a hard
time in rounding up the scattered bunches.

A few of them had succeeded in working some of the animals back to the
bedding ground of the previous night, where the animals were left in
charge of one man.

With the coming of the morning and the fog, which blanketed everything,
their work became doubly difficult. The storm had wiped out almost all
traces of the trail made by the different herds in their escape, until
even an Indian would have been perplexed in an effort to follow them.

"Who is missing?" asked Stallings, riding into camp after a fruitless
search for his cattle.

"Tad Butler, for one," answered Walter Perkins.

"Let's see. He was on guard with Big-foot Sanders," mused the foreman.
"Big-foot has not shown up, so the young man probably is with him. No
need to worry about them. Big-foot knows this country like a book. You
can't lose him. Then there's Curley Adams and Lumpy Bates to come in
yet. I can see us eating our Thanksgiving dinner on the trail if this
thing keeps up much longer."

Yet, despite these discouragements, the foreman kept his temper and his
head.

"Is there nothing we can do toward finding the boy?" asked Professor
Zepplin anxiously.

"Does it look like it?" answered Stallings, motioning toward the fog
that lay over them like a dull, gray, cheerless blanket.

Late in the afternoon Curley and Lumpy came straggling into camp with
the remnants of the herd, with which they had raced out hours before. An
hour afterwards, Big-foot Sanders drove in with a bunch of two hundred
more.

"Where's the Pinto?" asked Stallings as Big-foot rode up to the trail
wagon and reported.

"The Pinto? Why, I haven't seen the kid since the bunch started on the
rampage last night. I thought he was with me on the other end of the
herd. Hasn't he come in yet?"

"No."

"Then the kid's lost. All the cows back?"

"I don't know. I'll look over the herd and make an estimate. You come
along with me."

Together the foreman and the big cowman rode out to the grazing ground,
where they circled the great herd, glancing critically over them as they
rode.

"What do you think?" asked Big-foot as they completed the circuit of the
herd.

"I should say we were close to five hundred head short," decided the
foreman. "How does it look to you?"

"I reckon you're about right. Suffering cats, but that was a run! Never
saw a bunch scatter so in my life."

"Couldn't be helped. The night was so dark you couldn't tell whether you
had a hundred or a thousand with you. Did you strike any cross trails
while you were coming in!"

"Nary a one--not in the direction I came from. If I'd kept on last
night, at the rate I was going, I'd have rounded up in Wyoming some time
to-day I reckon. Sorry the Pinto's strayed away. He'll have a time of it
finding his way back. Reckon we won't see the kid again this trip,"
decided Big-foot.

"We've got to," answered the foreman sharply. "We don't move from this
bed till he's been picked up, even if it takes all summer."

"You--you don't reckon he's with that other bunch, do you?"

"I shouldn't be surprised. The boy has pluck and I have an idea that if
he got in with a lot of cows he'd stick to them till the pony went down
under him."

"More'n likely that's what happened. I'll tell you what we had better
do----"

"Get all the boys together who are not needed on guard," interrupted
Stallings. "Let them circle out to the west and southwest and shoot.
Have each man fire a shot every five minutes by the watch as they move
out. That will keep them in touch with each other, and will act as a
guide to the kid if he happens to be within hearing."

"How far shall we go?"

"Half an hour out. It's not safe to leave the herd any longer unless the
fog clears away. As soon as that goes we'll organize a regular search. I
want those cows, and I want to find the boy."

The men quickly mounted their ponies and disappeared in the fog,
following the orders given by the foreman. After a time those in camp
could faintly hear the distant cracks of the cowpunchers' pistols as
they fired their signals into the air.

In the meantime Tad Butler was keeping his lonely vigil on the fogbound
plains many miles away.

The fog was still hovering over the herd as the afternoon waned, and the
lad's body was dripping wet from it. Occasionally he brushed a hand
across his face, wiping away the moisture.

Darkness settled down earlier than usual that night. Yet, to the boy's
great relief, the fog lifted shortly afterwards and the stars came out
brightly.

With the skill of an old cowman Tad had bedded down the herd and began
to ride slowly about them, whistling vigorously. His face ached from the
constant puckering of his lips, and his wounds gave him considerable
pain. Yet he lost none of his cheerfulness.

At times Tad found himself drooping in his saddle as his sleepiness
overcame him. But he fought the temptation to doze by talking to himself
and bringing the quirt sharply against his legs.

"Tad Butler, don't you dare to go to sleep!" he warned himself. "It's
the first real duty you have had to perform, so you're not going to make
a mess of it. My, but I'm hungry!"

From that on the boy never allowed his eyelids to drop, though at times
they felt as if weighted down with lead.

After what seemed an eternity, the gray dawn appeared on the eastern
horizon. Immediately Tad began routing out the cows that they might have
an opportunity to graze before the rising of the sun. It was his
intention to point them toward where he believed the camp to be the
moment they had grazed to their satisfaction. Until then it would not be
wise to start the animals on their course.

About six o'clock, deciding that they had eaten enough, Tad began
galloping up and down, shouting and applying his quirt here and there to
the backs of the cows. It was slow work for one lone horseman to start
five hundred cattle on the trail. Yet, after half an hour of effort, he
had the satisfaction of seeing them begin to move.

"Whoop!" shouted the boy. "I'm a real cowboy this time!"

Yet his task was more difficult than he had imagined it could be. While
he was urging on one part of the herd, the others would lag by the
wayside and begin to graze.

Constant effort and continual moving about at high speed on his part,
were necessary to keep up any sort of movement among the cattle.

The lad headed as nearly as possible for the southeast, believing that
he had come from that direction.

At the same time a party had set out from the camp in search of young
Butler. They had laid their course more toward the southwest. Holding
these directions the two parties would not come within some miles of
each other.

Tad's eyes were continually sweeping the plains in hope of discovering a
horseman or some signs of the main herd, which he was sure must have
been rounded up long before. Not a trace of them could he discover.

Once the boy straightened up in his saddle believing he had heard the
report of a gun. After listening for some time he came to the conclusion
that he had been in error.

"I guess it's my stomach imagining things," grinned Tad Butler.

He had now been out for two nights, and was now well along on the second
day. During all that time he had not had a mouthful to eat. His lips
were dry and parched; his throat burned fearfully. Still, he kept
resolutely on. About two o'clock in the afternoon the herd came upon a
clump of trees. Tad at sight of it, spurred his pony on, attracted by
the greenness of the grass about the place, hoping that he might find a
spring.

But he was doomed to disappointment. There was no sign of water to be
found. With almost a sob in his throat the boy swung himself into his
saddle again.

"Barney, you and I ought to be camels. Then we could carry all the water
we need," he told the pony. "If we don't find some pretty soon I reckon
we'll dry up and blow away. Gid-ap, Barney!"

Once more the lad began his monotonous pounding back and forth along the
side of the herd which was now spread out over a full half mile of
territory, urging with all his strength in order to get the animals to
quicken their pace.

In the camp, Stallings and the others had begun to show their worriment.
Not a trace had been found of boy or herd. The main hope of the foreman
was that Tad might come upon a ranch or a town somewhere, in his course,
and in that way get help to direct him back to camp. As for the cattle,
he feared that they had become so split up that it would be well-nigh
impossible to get them together again.

During the whole afternoon, Bob Stallings had been riding about his own
herd, sweeping the plain with a pair of field glasses.

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