d for his
tactlessness. Bob Birnie himself had thought of that afterwards, and had
excused the oversight by saying that he had depended on the map, and had
not foreseen a three-day dry drive.

However that may be, that night was a night of panicky desperation.
Ezra walked beside the oxen and shouted and swung his lash, and the
oxen strained forward bellowing so that not even Dulcie could sleep,
but whimpered fretfully in her mother's arms. Buddy sat up wide-eyed and
watched for the big river, and tried not to be a 'fraid-cat and cry like
Dulcie.

It was long past starry midnight when a little wind puffed out of the
darkness and the oxen threw up their heads and sniffed, and put a new
note into their "M-baw-aw-aw-mm!" They swung sharply so that the wind
blew straight into the front of the wagon, which lurched forward with a
new impetus.

"Glo-ory t' Gawd, Missy! dey smells watah, sho 's yo' bawn!" sobbed Ezra
as he broke into a trot beside the wheelers. "'Tain't fur--lookit dat-ah
huhd a-goin' it! No 'm, Missy, DEY ain't woah out--dey smellin' watah
an' dey'm gittin' TO it! 'Tain't fur, Missy."

Buddy clung to the back of the seat and stared round-eyed into the
gloom. He never forgot that lumpy shadow which was the herd, traveling
fast in dust that obscured the nearest stars. The shadow humped here
and there as the cattle crowded forward at a shuffling half trot, the
click--awash of their shambling feet treading close on one another. The
rapping tattoo of wide-spread horns clashing against wide-spread horns
filled him with a formless terror, so that he let go the seat to clutch
at mother's dress. He was not afraid of cattle-they were as much a
part of his world as were Ezra and the wagon and the camp-fires-but he
trembled with the dread which no man could name for him.

These were not the normal, everyday sounds of the herd. The herd had
somehow changed from plodding animals to one overwhelming purpose that
would sweep away anything that came in its path. Two thousand parched
throats and dust-dry tongues-and suddenly the smell of water that would
go gurgling down two thousand eager gullets, and every intervening
second a cursed delay against which the cattle surged blindly. It was
the mob spirit, when the mob was fighting for its very existence.

Over the bellowing of the cattle a yelling cowboy now and then made
himself heard. The four oxen straining under their yokes broke into
a lumbering gallop lest they be ou