e of a mighty cataract, the
pound, pound, pound of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers.

Suddenly he felt himself sinking, horribly, irresistibly. "God! What is
it?" as his horse went down with her foreleg in a gopher-hole. "Up, up,
you damned brute!" but the mare's leg had cracked like a pipe-stem. In his
fury at the beast Simpson began kicking her, then started to run as the
cattle swept forward like a black storm-cloud.

The next second the great sea of cattle had broken over horse and rider.
When it had passed there was not enough left of either to warrant burial
or to furnish a feast for the buzzards. A few shreds of clothes, that had
once been a man, lay scattered there; a something that had been a horse.

XVII

Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst

The matriarch had delayed longer in moving camp than was consistent with
her habitual watchfulness where the interests of the sheep were involved.
Mary Carmichael, who had already become inured to the experience of
moving, was even conscious of a certain impatience at the delay, and could
only explain the apathy with which Mrs. Yellett received reports of the
dearth of pasturage on the ground that she wished each fresh educational
germ to take as deep root as possible before transplantation. So that when
Mrs. Yellett, shortly after Leander Dax's arrival at camp in the capacity
of herder, announced that she and Leander were to make a trip to the
dipping-vat that had kept Ben from his classes for the past ten days, and
invited the "gov'ment" to join the expedition, Mary accepted with fervor.

The Yelletts' "bunch" of sheep did not exceed three thousand head, and the
matriarch had wisely decreed that it should be restricted to that number,
as she wished always to give the flock her personal supervision.

"'The hen that's the surest of her chicks is the one that does her own
settin','" was the adage from the Book of Hiram with which Mrs. Yellett
succinctly summed up the case.

Each autumn, therefore, the wethers and the dry-bag ewes were sent to the
market, and as the result of continual weeding of the stock the matriarch
had as promising a herd of its size as could be found in Wyoming. Often
she had explained to Mary, who was learning of the wonders of this new
world with remarkable aptness, that she had constantly to fight against
the inclination to increase her business of sheep-raising, but that as
soon as she should be