the steers ran somethin' fierce.
We left the little gullies an' washes level-full of dead steers. Finally
I saw the herd was makin' to pass a kind of low pocket between ridges.
There was a hog-back--as we used to call 'em--a pile of rocks stickin'
up, and I saw the herd was goin' to split round it, or swing out to the
left. An' I wanted 'em to go to the right so mebbe we'd be able to drive
'em into the pocket. So, with all my boys except three, I rode hard to
turn the herd a little to the right. We couldn't budge 'em. They went on
en' split round the rocks, en' the most of 'em was turned sharp to the
left by a deep wash we hedn't seen--hed no chance to see.

"The other three boys--Jimmy Vail, Joe Willis, an' thet little Cairns
boy--a nervy kid! they, with Cairns leadin', tried to buck thet herd
round to the pocket. It was a wild, fool idee. I couldn't do nothin'.
The boys got hemmed in between the steers an' the wash--thet they hedn't
no chance to see, either. Vail an' Willis was run down right before our
eyes. An' Cairns, who rode a fine hoss, he did some ridin'. I never seen
equaled, en' would hev beat the steers if there'd been any room to run
in. I was high up an' could see how the steers kept spillin' by twos an'
threes over into the wash. Cairns put his hoss to a place thet was too
wide fer any hoss, an' broke his neck an' the hoss's too. We found that
out after, an' as fer Vail an' Willis--two thousand steers ran over the
poor boys. There wasn't much left to pack home fer burying!... An', Miss
Withersteen, thet all happened yesterday, en' I believe, if the white
herd didn't run over the wall of the Pass, it's runnin' yet."

On the morning of the second day after Judkins's recital, during which
time Jane remained indoors a prey to regret and sorrow for the boy
riders, and a new and now strangely insistent fear for her own person,
she again heard what she had missed more than she dared honestly
confess--the soft, jingling step of Lassiter. Almost overwhelming relief
surged through her, a feeling as akin to joy as any she could have
been capable of in those gloomy hours of shadow, and one that suddenly
stunned her with the significance of what Lassiter had come to mean to
her. She had begged him, for his own sake, to leave Cottonwoods. She
might yet beg that, if her weakening courage permitted her to dare
absolute loneliness and helplessness, but she realized now that if she
were left alone her life would become on