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!" That was what saved him, for he had the sense to obey.