cattle are all looking in one
direction."

"You are right," said Rafael. "This way--Ay de mi!"

There was another heave of the earth, distinct from the steady
vibration of stampeding cattle. The adobe wall rocked violently,
sprang, twisted, crumbled to the ground, a heap of dust.

For a moment the boys were invisible. Then they emerged, one by one,
choking and spitting, rubbing their eyes with their knuckles. When they
had recovered some measure of vision they huddled together, staring
with affrighted eyes at the moving wall of cattle not twenty yards to
their left, hardly able to keep their balance.

Suddenly Roldan pulled his wits together. "Sit down," he said. "We are
the colour now of the earth. If we keep quiet and look no taller than
weeds they will not see us and we shall not be hurt."

The boys dropped to the ground and sat in silence, staring ahead of
them. Would that rushing, heaving, bellowing mass have no end? It was
indeed a long time before the last line, curiously compact, swept by.
Occasionally the earth jumped with brief abruptness, causing hair to
crackle at the roots, and dust-laden as it was, make as if to rise on
end. The squirrels were screeching in the trees. The birds pitifully
twittered. Even the leaves rustled in response to those terrible
quivers.

The cattle were a red streak at the end of the perspective. The boys
rose, shook themselves, and walked heavily to their tethered mustangs.
The poor beasts were trembling and whinnying; they greeted their young
masters with a quavering neigh of relief. The boys mounted; but
although they rode rapidly, with ever increasing impatience, they
paused every few moments to listen; there was likely to be a return
stampede at any moment. More than once they were obliged to swerve
suddenly aside from yawning rifts, and they passed a spring of boiling
water, spouting and hissing upward, which had not been there in the
morning. They were too frightened to talk; not only the paralysing awe
of the earthquake was upon them, but the least imaginative saw his home
levelled to the ground, his relatives and friends trodden down into the
cracking earth. Hills lay between them and the Casa Encarnacion.

There were two exits from the valley where the branding had taken
place: one, very narrow, to the right, which led directly to the house,
the other straight ahead, almost as broad as the valley itself. The
boys saw at a glance that pursued and pursuers had taken