wickedly
alert, and with a lumbering speed much greater than the girl could
manage.

She came up over the last rise, chalky-white and gasping, her hair
flying, in the last extremity of terror. The nearest of the pursuing
cattle were within ten yards when Calhoun fired from twenty yards
beyond. One creature bellowed as the blast-bolt struck.

It went down and others crashed into it and swept over it, and more
came on. The girl saw Calhoun now, and ran toward him, panting. He
knelt very deliberately and began to check the charge by shooting the
leading animals.

He did not succeed. There were more cattle following the first, and
more and more behind them. It appeared that all the cattle on the
plain joined in the blind and senseless charge. The thudding of hoofs
became a mutter and then a rumble and then a growl.

Plunging, clumsy figures rushed past on either side. But horns and
heads heaved up over the mound of animals Calhoun had shot. He shot
them too. More and more cattle came pounding past the rampart of his
victims, but always, it seemed, some elected to climb the heap of
their dead and dying fellows, and Calhoun shot and shot....

But he split the herd. The foremost animals had been charging a
sighted human enemy. Others had followed because it is the instinct of
cattle to join their running fellows in whatever crazed urgency they
feel. There was a dense, pounding, wailing, grunting, puffing, raising
thick and impenetrable clouds of dust which hid everything but
galloping beasts going past on either side.

It lasted for minutes. Then the thunder of hoofs diminished. It ended
abruptly, and Calhoun and the girl were left alone with the gruesome
pile of animals which had divided the charging herd into two parts.
They could see the rears of innumerable running animals, stupidly
continuing the charge, hardly different, now, from a stampede, whose
original objective none now remembered.

Calhoun thoughtfully touched the barrel of his blast-rifle and winced
at its scorching heat.

"I just realized," he said coldly, "that I don't know your name. What
is it?"

"Maril," said the girl. She swallowed. "Th--thank you."

"Maril," said Calhoun, "you are an idiot! It was half-witted at best
to go off by yourself! You could have been lost! You could have cost
me days of hunting for you, days badly needed for more important
matters!"

He stopped and took breath. "You may have spoiled what little chance
I've got to d