again, motionless, fronting the four points of the compass, thus making
the radii of a smaller inner circle, into which the teams of the wagons
as well as the troopers' horses were closely "wound up" and densely
packed together in an immovable mass. As the circle became smaller the
troopers leaped from their horses,--which, however, continued to blindly
follow each other in the narrower circle,--and ran to the wagons,
carbines in hand. In five minutes from the time of giving the order
the straggling train was a fortified camp, the horses corralled in the
centre, the dismounted troopers securely posted with their repeating
carbines in the angles of the rude bastions formed by the deserted
wagons, and ready for an attack. The stampede, if such it was, was
stopped.

And yet no cause for it was to be seen! Nothing in earth or sky
suggested a reason for this extraordinary panic, or the marvelous
evolution that suppressed it. The guide, with three men in open order,
rode out and radiated across the empty plain, returning as empty of
result. In an hour the horses were sufficiently calmed and fed, the camp
slowly unwound itself, the teams were set to and were led out of the
circle, and as the rays of the setting sun began to expand fanlike
across the plain the cavalcade moved on. But between them and the
sinking sun, and visible through its last rays, was a faint line of haze
parallel with their track. Yet even this, too, quickly faded away.

Had the guide, however, penetrated half a mile further to the west
he would have come upon the cause of the panic, and a spectacle more
marvelous than that he had just witnessed. For the illimitable plain
with its monotonous prospect was far from being level; a hundred yards
further on he would have slowly and imperceptibly descended into
a depression nearly a mile in width. Here he not only would have