Tom!" suddenly called Eradicate. "Yo'-all done
flustered dat mule, dat's what yo' done. Yo'-all am too much excited
'bout him. Be calm! Be calm!"

"Calm! With that bunch of wild animals bearing down on us?" shouted
Tom. "Let's see you be calm, Rad. Come on here, you obstinate
brute!" he cried, straining on the rope.

"Let me do it, Massa Tom. Let me do it," suggested the colored man
hurrying to the balky beast.

Then, as gently as if he was talking to a nervous child, and totally
oblivious to the danger of the approaching horses, Eradicate went up
to the mule's head, rubbed its ears until they pointed naturally
once more, murmured something to it, and then, taking the rope from
Ned and Tom, Eradicate led the mule along toward the rocks as easily
as if there had never been any question about going there.

"For the love of tripe! How did you do it?" asked Tom.

"Bless my peck of oats!" gasped Mr. Damon. "It's a good thing we had
Rad along!"

"All mules am alike," said the colored man with a grin. "An dish
yeah one ain't much different from mah Boomerang. I guess he's a
sorter cousin."

"Come on!" yelled San Pedro. "No time to lose. Make for the rocks!"

Tom, Ned and Mr. Damon sprinted then, and there was need to, for the
foremost of the galloping horses was not a hundred feet away. Then
came Eradicate, leading the mule that had at last consented to
hurry. The natives, with San Pedro, were already at the rocks,
waiting for the white hunters with the deadly electric rifles.

"If they stampede our mules we'll be in a pickle!" murmured Ned.

"I guess those ropes will hold unless they bite them through,"
remarked Tom.

"Yes, they sure hold," cried San Pedro, and indeed one had to shout
now to be heard above the thundering of the horses. Now the tethered
mules were lost to sight in the multitude of the other steeds all
about them.

"Come on, Ned!" yelled Tom, as he sighted his rifle. "Pump it into
them! We must turn them, or they may come over this way, and if they
do it will be all up with us."

"Shoot to kill?" asked Ned, as he drew back the firing lever of his
electric rifle.

"No, only a stunning charge. Those horses are valuable, and there's
no use killing them. All we want to do is to turn them aside."

"That's right," agreed Mr. Damon, forgetting in the excitement of
the moment to bless himself or anything. "We'll only stun them."

The rifles were quickly adjusted to send out a comparatively weak
c