Thin
at this season--thet'll tell you how your steers was pestered.
Fer instance, one night a strange runnin' streak of fire run
right through the herd. That streak was a coyote--with an oiled
an' blazin' tail! Fer I shot it an' found out. We had hell with
the herd that night, an' if the sage an' grass hadn't been
wet--we, hosses, steers, an' all would hev burned up. But I said
I wasn't goin' to tell you any of the tricks....Strange now, Miss
Withersteen, when the stampede did come it was from natural
cause-- jest a whirlin' devil of dust. You've seen the like
often. An' this wasn't no big whirl, fer the dust was mostly
settled. It had dried out in a little swale, an' ordinarily no
steer would ever hev run fer it. But the herd was nervous en'
wild. An' jest as Lassiter said, when that bunch of white steers
got to movin' they was as bad as buffalo. I've seen some buffalo
stampedes back in Nebraska, an' this bolt of the steers was the
same kind.
"I tried to mill the herd jest as Lassiter did. But I wasn't
equal to it, Miss Withersteen. I don't believe the rider lives
who could hev turned thet herd. We kept along of the herd fer
miles, an' more 'n one of my boys tried to get the steers
a-millin'. It wasn't no use. We got off level ground, goin' down,
an' then the steers ran somethin' fierce. We left the little
gullies an' washes level-full of dead steers. Finally I saw the
herd was makin' to pass a kind of low pocket between ridges.
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