man. Then I let go and crawled
into that until the herd passed by."

The boy breathed a sigh of relief.

"I sure thought you were gone," he said.

The Supervisor scanned him keenly, then slapped Kit heartily on the
flank.

"You've got a good little mare there," he said; "there's not many of
them could have done it. Tell me all about it some time. What started
them?" he added, turning to the cattleman.

"That fool new bridge gave way just as the last of the bunch crowded on
it. About twenty of them fell over the cliff there, and about thirty
more along the road. But it might have been a heap worse, an' you ought
ter have two life-savin' medals."

Merritt's only reply was a gesture of protest.

"An' you, youngster," went on the cattleman, "you kept your nerve and
rode a bully ride. I wish you'd take my quirt and keep it from me as a
remembrance of your first experience with a cattle stampede."

Wilbur stammered some words of thanks, but the foreman waved them aside.

"And now," said the Supervisor, with an entire change of tone, "I guess
we'll go back and get the pack-horse and go on to the valley."

As they rode over the bridge Wilbur noted with a great deal of interest
the breakage of the supporting timbers on the outer side, and looking
down into the valley beneath, he could see the bodies of the cattle who
had been pushed over the edge in the stampede.

"I read a story once," said the boy, "of a youngster who got caught in a
stampede of buffalo, and when his horse lost his footing he escaped by
jumping from the back of one buffalo to another until he reached the
outside of the herd. But I never believed it much."

"It makes a good yarn," said the Supervisor, "an' it's a little like the
story they tell of Buffalo Bill, who, trying to get away from a buffalo
stampede, was thrown by his horse puttin' his foot in a badger hole and
breaking his leg."

"Why, what in the world did he do?" queried Wilbur.

"He waited until the foremost buffalo was just upon him, then gave a
leap, clear over his horns, and landed on his back, then turning sharply
round so as to face the head instead of the tail, he pulled out his
revolver and kept shooting to one side of the buffalo's head, just past
his eye, so that at every shot the beast turned a little more to one
side, thus cutting him out of the herd. Then, when he was clear of the
herd, he shot the buffalo."

"What for?" asked Wilbur indignantly. "It seems a shame to