hoping that he could draw off to one side and avoid being swept away. All around him he could hear the cattle, their horns clashing as they pressed together with a sound like hail in a field of corn.
Hartwell had lost his direction. The wind was no longer his guide, for he was riding faster than any wind except a hurricane. The cattle were bearing him along like a leaf in a freshet. Behind him the roar increased as the fury of flight possessed them, the pressure of that vast body of charging beasts beyond the power of any man to check. If his horse should fall, or its endurance prove unequal to the flight, they would be crushed together, as men and horses had been trampled in stampedes of his recollection.
There was only one thing to do, and that bear ahead with the cattle in their furious blind race. They were poisoned with the great fear which the understanding of man could not compass nor sound. The sound of their own flight increased the terror which their unreasoning brains had hatched. They would run on until their tongues lolled out from thirst, their eyes glazed, their heads hung between their legs.
That horse of Duncan was a sound-winded animal. In spite of the strain he held his own with the beasts, to which panic had lent speed and endurance not ordinarily their own.
