CHAPTER X--THE STAMPEDE

Their guide was fully as capable as a man, and proved it when it came to making camp. Her selection of the camping site could not have been bettered; she wielded an axe as well as a man in cutting brush for bedding and wood for the fires.

As soon as Pedro and the burros arrived, Min proceeded to get supper for the party with a skill and celerity that reminded him, so Tom said, of one of those jugglers in vaudeville that keep half a dozen articles in the air at a time.

Min broiled bacon, made coffee, mixed and baked biscuits on a board before the coals, and finally made the popular flapjacks in unending number--and attended to all these things without assistance.

"Pop can beat me at flapjacks. Them's his long suit," declared the girl guide. "Wait till you see him toss 'em--a pan in each hand."

Min's viands could only be praised, and the party made a hearty supper.

As dusk mantled them about, Tom suddenly saw a spark of light out across the plain to the south.

"What's yonder?" he asked. "I thought you said there was no house near here, Miss Peters?"

"Gee! if you don't stop calling me _that_," gasped their guide, "I certainly will go crazy. I ain't used to it. But that ain't a house."

"What is it, then?" asked the abashed Tom.

"One of the Lazy C outfits I reckon. Didn't you see the cattle grazin' yonder when we come over that last ridge?"

"Oh, my! a regular herd of cattle such as you read about?" demanded Sally Blanchard. "And real cowboys with them?"

"I s'pect they think they're real enough," replied Min, dryly. "Punchin' steers ain't no cinch, lemme tell you."

"Doesn't she talk queerly?" said Rebecca, in a whisper. "She really doesn't seem to be a very proper person."

"My goodness!" gasped Jennie Stone, choked with laughter at this. "What do you expect of a girl who's lived in the mines all her life? Polite, Back-Bay English and all the refinements of the Hub?"

"No-o," admitted Rebecca. "But, after all, refined people are ever so much nicer than rude people. Don't you find it so yourself, Jennie?"

"Well, I s'pose that's so," admitted the plump girl. "For a steady diet. Just the same, if you judged it by its husk, you'd never know how sweet the meat of a chestnut is."

The campfire at the chuckwagon of the herding outfit was several miles away; and later in the evening it died down and the glow of it disappeared.

The girls were tired enough to seek repose early. Min, Tom and the Mexican boy had agreed to divide the night into three watches. Otherwise Rebecca declared she would be afraid even to close her eyes--and then her regular breathing announced that sleep had overtaken her within sixty seconds of her lying down!

Min chose the first watch and Ruth was not sleepy. During the turns before midnight the girl from the East and the girl who had lived a boy's life in the mining country became very well acquainted indeed.

There had not been any "lucky strikes" in this region since Min could remember. But now and then new veins of gold were discovered on old claims; or other metals had been discovered where the early miners had looked only for gold.

"And pop's an old-timer," sighed Min. "He'll never be any good for anything but prospectin'. Once it gets into a man, I reckon there ain't no way of his ever gettin' away from it. Pop's panned for gold in three States; he'll jest die a prospector and nothin' more."

"It's good of you to have stuck to him since you grew big," said Ruth.

"What else could I do?" demanded the Western girl. "Of course he loves me in his way; and when he goes on his sprees he'd die some time if I wasn't on hand to nurse him. But some day I'm goin' to get a bunch of money of my own--an' some clo'es--and I'm goin' to light out and leave him where he lies. Yes, ma'am!"

Ruth did not believe Min would do quite that; and to change the subject, she asked suddenly:

"What's that yonder? That glow over the hill?"

"Moon. It's going to be bright as day, too. Them boys of the Lazy C will ride close herd."

"Why?"

"Don't you know moonlight makes cattle right ornery? The shadows are so black, you know. Then, mebbe there's something 'bout moonlight that affects cows. It does folks, too. Makes 'em right crazy, I hear."

"I have heard of people being moonstruck," laughed Ruth. "But that was in the tropics."

"Howsomever," Min declared, "it makes the cows oneasy. See! there's the edge of her. Like silver, ain't it?"

The moon flooded the whole plain with its beams as it rose from behind the mountains. One might have easily read coarse print by its light.

Every bush and shrub cast a black reflection upon the ground. It was very still--not a breath of air stirring. Far, far away rose the whine of a coyote; and the girls could hear one of the herdsmen singing as he urged his pony around and around the cattle.

"You hear 'em pipin' up?" said Min, smiling. "Them boys of the Lazy C know their business. Singin' keeps the cows quiet--sometimes."

Their own fire died out completely. There was no need for it. By and by Ruth roused Tom Cameron, for it was twelve o'clock. Then both she and Min crept into their own blanket-nests, already arranged. The other girls were sleeping as peacefully as though they were in their own beds at Ardmore College.

Tom was refreshed with sleep and had no intention of so much as "batting an eye." The brilliancy of the moonlight was sufficient to keep him awake.

Yet he got to thinking and it took something of a jarring nature to arouse him at last. He heard hoarse shouts and felt the earth tremble as many, many hoofs thundered over it!

Leaping up he looked around. Bright as the moon's rays were he did not at first descry the approaching danger. It could not be possible that the cattle had stampeded and were coming up the valley, headed for the tourists' camp!

Yet that is what he finally made out. He shouted to Pedro, and finally kicked the boy awake. Without thinking of the danger to the girls Tom believed first of all that their ponies and burros might be swept away with the charging steers.

"Gather up those lariats and hold the ponies!" Tom shouted to the Mexican. "The burros won't go far away from the horses. Hi, Min Peters! What do you know about this?"

Their guide had come out of her blanket wide awake. She appreciated the peril much more keenly than did Tom or the girls.

"A fire! We want a fire!" she shouted. "Never mind them ponies, Pedro! You strike a light!"

Up the valley came charging the forefront of the cattle, their wicked, long horns threatening dire things. As the Eastern girls awoke and saw the cattle coming, they were for the most part paralyzed with fear.

"Fire! Start a fire!" yelled Min, again.

The thunder of the hoofs almost drowned her voice. But Ruth Fielding suddenly realized what the girl guide meant. The cattle would not charge over a fire or into the light of one.

She grabbed something from under her blanket and leaped away from Miss Cullam's tent toward the stampede. Tom shouted to her to come back; Helen groaned aloud and seized the sleepy Jennie Stone.

"She'll be killed!" declared Helen.

"What's Ruth doing?" gasped the plump girl.

Then Ruth touched the trigger of the big tungsten lamp, and the spotlight shot the herd at about the middle of its advance wave. Snorting and plunging steers crowded away from the dazzling beam of light, brighter and more intense than the moon's rays, and so divided and passed on either side of the tourists' encampment.

The odor of the beasts and the dust they kicked up almost suffocated the girls, but they were unharmed. Nor did the ponies and burros escape with the frightened herd.

The racing punchers passed on either side of the camp, shouting their congratulations to the campers. The latter, however, enjoyed little further sleep that night.

"Such excitement!" murmured Miss Cullam, wrapped in her blanket and sitting before the fire that Pedro had built up again. "And I thought you said, Ruth Fielding, that this trip would probably be no more strenuous than a picnic on Bliss Island?"

But Min eyed the girl of the Red Mill with something like admiration. "Huh!" she muttered, "some of these Eastern tenderfoots are some good in a pinch after all."