tonishing velocity. Why he did this, he
himself did not fully understand. It may have been that, impressed with
the utter uselessness of trying to escape by running, he had a blind
hope of unhorsing one of his enemies and wrenching his steed from him.

He had taken only a few leaps, however, when he discovered that the
beasts running forward, as if to meet him, were cattle.

Fully fifty animals, belonging to the herd several miles distant, had
started out on a little stampede of their own, and fate brought them and
him in collision.

It mattered not, for nothing could make the situation worse. The next
instant Avon was among them, in imminent risk of being trampled to
death. The beasts were terrified by the advent of the footman, and
scattered in the wildest confusion.

While he was in such deadly peril, the animals served as a shield
against the assault of the Comanche close behind him. Anxious as he was
to secure the fugitive, he was not prepared to "cut him out" from a
drove of stampeded cattle.

He turned to avoid the terrific rush, and catching fitful glimpses of
the leaping form among the beasts, raised his gun and let fly.

His shot struck, but, instead of bringing down the youth, it tumbled one
of the bullocks headlong on the plain. Avon would have turned at once to
give attention to his enemy, had he not been fully occupied in saving
himself from the animals themselves.

Fortunately he had not penetrated far among the drove, and, by a
continuance of his inimitable dexterity, he dodged from among them,
helped thereto by the efforts of the cattle themselves to flee from the
terrifying object.

It was at this juncture, when the youth was striving to get sight of his
enemy, who, he believed, was trying equally hard to secure another shot
at him, that he saw the very thing he had been dreading from the first.

It was a single horseman, who almost rode him down ere he could check
his steed. Avon was so flurried from his fierce exertions, that, before
he could bring his rifle to his shoulder and discharge it, the other
anticipated him.

But the man did not fire at _him_. He aimed at the Comanche, not a dozen
yards distant, and hit him fairly and squarely.

"Helloa, Baby, what the mischief is up?"

"Thank Heaven, Ballyhoo, it's you!" exclaimed the panting youth, ready
to drop from exhaustion.

"Ballyhoo," was the nickname of Oscar Gleeson, one of the cowboys in
charge of the two thousand cattle that wer