valley; then the black curtain dropped as suddenly as it had
lifted.

"Keep a-hollering, Bud!" came the command, and after it Bob's
voice trilled high above the thunder-growl:

"Hosanna in the high-est.

Hosanna to your King!"

A strange thrill of excitement came to Thurston. It was all new
to him; for his life had been sheltered from the rages of
nature. He had never before been out under the night sky when
it was threatening as now. He flinched when came an
ear-splitting crash that once again lifted the black curtain and
showed him, white-lighted, the plain. In the dark that followed
came a rhythmic thud of hoofs far up the creek, and the rattle
of living castanets. Sunfish threw up his head and listened,
muscles a-quiver.

"There's a bunch a-running," called Bob from across the
frightened herd. "If they hit us, give Sunfish his head, he's
been there before--and keep on the outside!"

Thurston yelled "All right!" but the pounding roar of the
stampede drowned his voice. A whirlwind of frenzied steers bore
down upon him--twenty-five hundred Panhandle two-year-olds,
though he did not know it then. his mind was all a daze, with
one sentence zigzagging through it like the lightning over his
head, "Give Sunfish his head, and keep on the outside!'