harge of electricity, and then they were trained on the dense mass
of horses, while the three marksmen began working the firing levers.

At first, though horse after horse fell to the ground, stunned,
there was no appreciable effect on the thousands in the drove. The
poor mules were hidden from sight, though by reason of divisions in
the living stream of animals it could still be told where they were
tethered, and where the horses separated to go past them.
Fortunately the ropes and pegs held.

"Fire faster!" cried Tom. "Shoot across the front of them, and try
to turn them to one side."

From the rocks, behind which the natives and our friends crouched,
there came a steady stream of electric fire. Horse after horse went
down, stunned but not badly hurt, and in a few hours the beasts
would feel no ill effects. The firing was redoubled, and then there
came a break in the steady stream of horseflesh.

Some hesitated and sought to turn back. Others, behind, pressed them
on, and then, as if in fear at the unknown and unseen power that was
laying low animal after animal, the great body, of horses, suddenly
turned at right angles to their course and broke away. There were
now two bodies of the wild runaways, those that had passed the
tethered mules, and those that had swung off. The stampede had been
broken.

"That's the stuff!" cried Tom, jumping up from behind the rocks, and
swinging his hat. "We've turned them."

"And just in time, too," added Ned, as he joined his chum. Then all
the others leaped up, and the sight of the human beings completed
the scare. The stampeding animals swung off more than before, so
that they were nearly doubling back on their own trail. The others
thundered off, and the ground was strewn with unconscious though
unharmed animals.

"One mule gone!" cried San Pedro, hastily counting the still
tethered animals which were wildly tugging at their ropes.

"Never mind," spoke Tom, "it's the one with some of that damaged
bartering stuff I intended for trading. We can afford to lose that.
Rad, is your animal all right?"

"He suah am, Massa Tom. Dish yeah mule am almost as sensible as
Boomerang, ain't yo'?" and Eradicate patted the big animal he was
leading.

"I'll send a man down the trail, and maybe he can pick up the
missing one," said San Pedro, and while the other natives were
quieting the restless mules, one tall black man hastened in the wake
of the retreating horses.

He came back in