well have tried
to get rid of its own mane. The riders swayed and bent with its motion
as if they were a part of its own bounding body. Tuttle gave the
animal its head just enough to allow it to work off its disapproval
harmlessly, and for the rest, it did nothing that he did not allow it
to do. Finally it recognized the mastery, and, pretending to be
dreadfully frightened by a sudden vivid flash of lightning, it started
off on a run.

"Hold on there, old man!" said Tuttle. "This won't do with two heavy
weights on top of you. You've got to pack double, but you'd better go
slow about it."

[Illustration: "WITH A WHOOPING YELL, HE DASHED AT THE HEAD OF THE
PLUNGING HERD"--_p. 82_]

Calming the horse down to a quick trot, they hurried on in the wake of
the stampede. They had lost all sound of the herd, and the trail which
the ploughing hoofs had made at the beginning of the storm had been
nearly obliterated by the beating rain. Once they thought they
caught the sound again and must be off the track. They followed it and
found it was the roaring of a high wave coming down an arroyo from a
cloudburst farther up in the mountain. Hurrying back, they kept to the
general direction the cattle had taken until the trail began to show
more plainly in the soaked earth, like a strip of ploughed land across
the hills. When they reached the next arroyo, they found it a torrent
of roaring water. The greater part of the cloudburst had flowed down
this channel, and where Mead and the cattle had to cross merely wet
sand and soaked earth, they would have to swim.

"See here, Tom," said Ellhorn, "two's too much for this beast in the
water. You take care of my belt and gun and I'll swim across."

"That's a mighty swift current, Nick. Don't you think we-all can make
it together?"

"I don't want to take any chances. Buck can get across with you all
right, but if he's got us both on him he might go down and then we'd
have to follow Emerson on foot. We're coverin' ground almighty slow,
anyway. I'm the best swimmer, and you-all can take care of my boots
and gun."

They waited a few moments for a flash of lightning to show them the
banks of the arroyo. By its light they saw a water course thirty feet
wide and probably ten feet deep, bank-full of a muddy, foaming flood,
in which waves two feet high roared after one another, carrying clumps
of bushes, stalks of cactus, bones, and other debris. As they plunged
into the torrent, Ellhorn seize