towards the wind, and he almost leaped the centre pole in his frantic
effort to avoid it. The eyes of the two men were turned instinctively in
that direction. Nothing was to be seen,--the illimitable plain and
the sinking sun were all that met the eye. But the horse continued to
struggle, and the wagon stopped. Then it was discovered that the horse
of an adjacent trooper was also laboring under the same mysterious
excitement, and at the same moment wagon No. 3 halted. The infection
of some inexplicable terror was spreading among them. Then two
non-commissioned officers came riding down the line at a sharp canter,
and were joined quickly by the young lieutenant, who gave an order.
The trumpeter instinctively raised his instrument to his lips, but was
stopped by another order.

And then, as seen by a distant observer, a singular spectacle was
unfolded. The straggling train suddenly seemed to resolve itself into a
large widening circle of horsemen, revolving round and partly hiding
the few heavy wagons that were being rapidly freed from their struggling
teams. These, too, joined the circle, and were driven before the
whirling troopers. Gradually the circle seemed to grow smaller under the
"winding-up" of those evolutions, until the horseless wagons reappeared
again, motionless, fronting the four points of the compass, thus making
the radii of a smaller inner circle, into which the teams of the wagons
as well as the troopers' horses were closely "wound up" and densely
packed together in an immovable mass. As the circle became smaller the
troopers leaped from their horses,--which, however, continued to blindly
follow each other in the narrower circle,--and ran to the wagons,
carbines in hand. In five minutes from the time of giving the order
the straggling train was a fortified camp, the horses corralled in the
centre, the dismounted troopers securely posted with their repeating
carbines in the angles of the rude bastions formed by the deserted
wagons, and ready for an attack. The stampede, if such it was, was
stopped.

And yet no cause for it was to be seen! Nothing in earth or sky
suggested a reason for this extraordinary panic, or the marvelous
evolution that suppressed it. The guide, with three men in open order,
rode out and radiated across the empty plain, returning as empty of
result. In an hour the horses were sufficiently calmed and fed, the camp
slowly unwound itself, the teams were set to and were led out of th