Part 13 (1/2)

Tom, Ned and Mr. Damon sprinted then, and there was need to, for the foremost of the galloping horses was not a hundred feet away. Then came Eradicate, leading the mule that had at last consented to hurry. The natives, with San Pedro, were already at the rocks, waiting for the white hunters with the deadly electric rifles.

”If they stampede our mules we'll be in a pickle!” murmured Ned.

”I guess those ropes will hold unless they bite them through,”

remarked Tom.

”Yes, they sure hold,” cried San Pedro, and indeed one had to shout now to be heard above the thundering of the horses. Now the tethered mules were lost to sight in the mult.i.tude of the other steeds all about them.

”Come on, Ned!” yelled Tom, as he sighted his rifle. ”Pump it into them! We must turn them, or they may come over this way, and if they do it will be all up with us.”

”Shoot to kill?” asked Ned, as he drew back the firing lever of his electric rifle.

”No, only a stunning charge. Those horses are valuable, and there's no use killing them. All we want to do is to turn them aside.”

”That's right,” agreed Mr. Damon, forgetting in the excitement of the moment to bless himself or anything. ”We'll only stun them.”

The rifles were quickly adjusted to send out a comparatively weak charge of electricity, and then they were trained on the dense ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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, Ma.s.sa 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 an hour with the missing animal, that had broken its tether rope and then, after running along with the wild horses had evidently dropped out of the drove. Aside from the loss of a small box, there had been no damage done, and the cavalcade was soon under way once more, leaving the motionless horses to recover from the effects of the electricity.

”Bless my saddle pad!” cried Mr. Damon. ”I don't think I want to go through anything like that again.”

”Neither do I,” agreed Tom. ”We are well out of it.”

”How much you take for one of them rifles?” asked San Pedro admiringly.