Anxious Hours
"Help! Help!" shrieked Nealie.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" squealed Sylvia, while Ducky's screaming rose above the
deafening roar that was all around them.
Rupert and Rumple fought and struggled to throw off the mattress and the
canvas and the oddments of clothing in which they were entangled. They
were choked and nearly suffocated, frightened almost out of their wits
by the crying of the girls, to which was now added the lusty howling of
Don and Billykins, who were being rolled and punched and pummelled like
their elders.
It was Rumple who got disentangled first, and when his head was free,
and he had managed to scramble to his feet, he gave a horrified shout of
amazement; for the wagon was lying on its side, there was the sound of
galloping in his ears, and everywhere he turned there was nothing to be
seen but rushing cattle and tossing horns.
[Illustration: "POURED PAST THE OVERTURNED WAGON"]
They had seen so much of the fierceness of the cattle on the previous
day that in a minute his hand was on Rupert's head, and he was pressing
his brother back into the comparative shelter given by the projecting
wagon wheel.
"Stay where you are! Don't attempt to move! It can't last much longer!"
he shouted, holding Rupert down by main force now, for those tossing
horns were such a frightful menace, and the mob of cattle pressed close
on either side as they poured past the overturned wagon in their mad
flight towards the hills.
"Oh, Rumple, what has happened? Is it an earthquake?" cried Nealie, who
was somewhat reassured by hearing Rumple shout to Rupert. At least the
boys were all alive, though, judging by the noise Don and Billykins were
making, some of them might be rather badly damaged.
"I don't think that it is anything except the cattle on the move, only
they are going as if they have been pretty badly scared," replied
Rumple, trying to stand up by hanging on to the wagon wheel. Then he
cried out sharply: "Look out, Nealie! Get in under the tilt quick, for
here come a fresh lot! Oh, I say, we shall all be smashed flat!"
It really looked as if they would be flattened out, for the next lot of
cattle, charging down the steep hillside, came straight for the camp,
and but for a lucky accident would most likely have gone straight over
the wagon, which lay on its side. But one big bullock caught its long
horns in the spokes of the wheel, the next blundered on to it and forced
it to its knees, another blundered on to that, until in about a minute
and a half there was piled up a most effectual rampart of struggling
beasts, which effectually checked the onrush from behind, diverting it
to either side.
It was to this accident that some, at least, of the seven owed their
lives, for Don and Billykins lay right in the path of the stampeding
herd, while Rupert, scrambling painfully to his feet, would most
certainly have been knocked down and trampled underfoot.
But the noise and the confusion, the snorting, bellowing, and blowing of
all those hundreds of terrified beasts, were quite beyond description.
After the first frightened outcry Ducky lay still and shivering in the
arms of Sylvia, who was sitting on the side of the wagon tilt, amid the
ruins of crockery and the contents of the grocery box, which had been
spilled all over her. Nealie had crawled to the front opening of the
tilt, and, regardless of her possible danger, had succeeded in fishing
Don and Billykins from the debris of canvas and torn mattress under
which they were being slowly smothered, and had dragged them into the
comparative safety of the overturned wagon. Then Rupert and Rumple
struggled into the same refuge, and the seven sat close together,
wondering what was going to happen next, while the wild uproar raged on
around them, and it seemed as if the rush of cattle would never cease.
"There must have been thousands and thousands of cattle that have gone
past," said Rupert, rubbing his lips with his hand before he ventured to
speak, because of the thick dust upon them.
"I should think that every one of those great mobs we have been passing
all day must have turned round and bolted back by the way they came,"
said Sylvia. "But what I don't understand is how it came about that the
wagon was bowled over."
"That is my fault," groaned Nealie. "I made Rocky back it on to the
slope, because I thought that we should be more sheltered from the
terrible wind, and I knew that the boys would not be in so much danger
of a wetting if it rained. Then the cattle, charging down the side of
the hill in the dark, must have blundered up against the wagon and just
bowled it over. They are so big and clumsy, you see, and when once they
start there is no stopping them. Now, if the wagon is badly damaged, we
shall be put to no end of expense because of my carelessness."
"But it was not carelessness if you did it for our comfort, and it is no
use thinking that the wagon is badly damaged, and getting worried about
it, until you know," said Rupert. "Of course we can't do anything
towards finding out, or putting it straight, until morning, for we might
only make matters worse, and invite more disaster still."
"Will it be long before it is morning?" asked Billykins in a voice of
misery. "I am quite dreadfully cold, and most horribly hungry."
"So am I, and I wish that we were back at Mrs. Warner's," said Don in a
dismal tone.
"I don't expect that it will be very long now, and if you curl up under
this rug, if it is a rug, you may go to sleep, and then you will forget
about being hungry," said Nealie, gripping something which felt like
drapery, and dragging it towards her.
"That is my frock!" cried Sylvia. "Creep in here, close to me,
Billykins, and then you will help to keep poor Ducky warm. There is room
for Don too. Don't sit on more of the lump sugar than you can help, as
it is very uncomfortable, I find; but if you were to eat some of the
lumps, perhaps they would warm you a little, for I have heard somewhere
that there is a great deal of warmth in sugar."
"I have found a lump. Will you have it, Nealie?" asked Ducky, groping in
the darkness for her elder sister, and feeling that, of them all, it
was Nealie who most needed comfort just then.
"I don't want it, thank you, dearie," answered Nealie, her anxieties
being too heavy for sugar to alleviate.
"Here is another; and--oh, I say, I have just put my fingers into
something horribly sticky! What can it be?" and Ducky stuffed her fist
in the face of Billykins, for it was so dark that she could not see
where she was thrusting it.
"Look out!" he exclaimed in an offended tone, then suddenly changed to a
shout of joy. "Oh, it is marmalade, and it is all over my mouth! Have
you got any more of it, Nealie?"
"Of course. There was a pot in the grocery box, and I had forgotten
about it, or we would have had it to help out with supper, and then it
would not have been wasted in this fashion," replied Nealie, feeling
that she would like to indulge in a good cry over the ruin which had
come upon them.
"It won't be wasted if only I can find where that pot is. Can you guide
my hand, Ducky, to find it?" asked Don eagerly.
"It seems to be all over me--the marmalade, I mean--but I don't know
where the pot is, and I am most horribly sticky!" cried Ducky, who was a
most fastidious little maiden.
"Where is your fist? I will suck it clean for you," volunteered Don,
with such an air of brotherly self-sacrifice that Nealie burst out
laughing, which was much better for her than the tears she longed to
shed, and which had been smarting under her eyelids only a minute
before.
For a few minutes there was great competition between Don and Billykins
for the privilege of sucking Ducky's fists clean of marmalade, and, the
comical side of the picture presenting itself to the little girl, she
laughed as much as Nealie; then Sylvia joined in, and at length they
were all making the best of things, groping in the dark for lumps of
sugar and dabs of marmalade, until they lighted on some that had
uncomfortably mixed itself up with the pepper, when a chorus of ohs! and
ahs! sounded from the group of explorers, and everyone immediately
decided that they had had enough marmalade for the present.
The cattle had all gone, and the night was entirely silent again, when
Rupert said anxiously: "I wonder where Rockefeller has gone? We shall be
in a pretty bad case if anything happens to the old horse."
"I will go in search of him when morning comes; the worst that could
happen would be that he would stampede with the cattle, and we shall
have the men in charge of the droves coming past presently," said
Rumple, who had made a sort of shelter for himself and Rupert from the
wreckage of the canvas which had been draped round the wagon.
"Perhaps the horse has not been upset at all by the panic of the cattle.
It is not as if it had been a lot of horses rushing across the
encampment in the middle of the night," said Sylvia, who had succeeded
in making Ducky so warm and comfortable that the little girl was falling
off to sleep again, although the rest of them were very wide-awake
indeed.
"I wish that I knew what the time is, but I don't know where to find the
matches, and it is too dark to see the face of my watch," said Rupert.
He was feeling the situation rather keenly, because he could do so very
little to help the others, when, by right of his position as eldest of
the family, he ought to have done so much.
"Don't worry about the time, dear; try to get a little sleep if you can.
You will need it so badly when the morning comes," said Nealie, moving a
little because she found that she was sitting in the frying pan, and she
remembered that it had only been rubbed with a bit of paper after being
used for frying bacon on the day before yesterday.
"I vote that we all go to sleep, seeing that we can do no good by
keeping awake. We can't even sort up this mess of marmalade and pepper,"
said Rumple, whose tongue was still on fire from the last lick of
marmalade which had been so liberally mixed with pepper.
"Someone is coming. I wonder if it is one of the cattle men?" said
Rupert, thrusting his head farther out from the canvas and getting the
full benefit of the cold wind which came howling and moaning out of the
south.
"There are two or three, judging by the noise. Shall we hail them, do
you think?" asked Nealie; but her voice had a nervous ring which gave
Rupert a sudden inspiration and made him say sharply:
"No, no. If they are the cattle men they will most likely hail us, and
if they are not it may be better that they should not take any notice of
us. Lie low, all of you, and don't make a sound while they go by."
"I am horribly afraid that I shall sneeze, for that pepper has got into
my nose!" gasped Don, then went off into a paroxysm of sneezing so
violent that Billykins gurgled with laughter, until Nealie found it
necessary to cover the pair of them with a cushion which she had found
by groping among fragments of broken cups, lumps of sugar, and debris of
all sorts.
The riders, of which there were two or three, checked their horses to
descend the hill past the overturned wagon; but as they did not trouble
to lower their voices, every word they said was perfectly audible
through the hush of the night.
"As neat a job of stampeding as ever I saw," said a hoarse voice.
"We got them away so quietly too. That was a bright idea of yours, Alf,
to make friends with the watchman last night," said another, whose tones
had a boyish ring, as if he were hardly grown up as yet.
"Alf always did understand making friends at the right time, and if I
know anything about it, there was something more than whisky in that
bottle from which you offered him a drink," said a third man, whose
voice had such a horrid ring that Nealie could not repress a shudder,
and she pressed the cushion down with a warning air upon the two boys as
the beginning of another gurgle sounded from them.
"What is that in the hollow there?" demanded the first speaker, whom the
others had called Alf.
"It looks like a wagon that has come to grief and been deserted," said
the third man in a casual tone, and then they put their horses to a
canter again and swept past the wagon without troubling more about it.
"Cattle thieves!" murmured Nealie, and there was a shaky sound in her
voice which made Rupert reach up to grip her hand, as if he would give
her more courage that way.
"What a mercy that the cattle charged down upon us and upset us in this
fashion, or we might have had something even more unpleasant to bear,"
whispered Sylvia, clasping Ducky closer in her arms and feeling grateful
for what at first had seemed such an awful disaster.
"Cattle thieves? But how will they manage to get clear away without the
proper drovers finding which way they have gone?" asked Rupert, who had
been straining his ears to discover the route taken by the men who had
just ridden past.
"Here comes Rockefeller. I say, Nealie, let me ride a little way after
those men and find out which way they have gone? It is a bit lighter
now. I expect that the moon is getting up; there is the end of a moon
that shows somewhere near morning, I know," said Rumple, then he thrust
out his head and called softly to a shape which he had seen faintly
outlined against the dark hillside, and he was immediately answered by a
cheerful whinny, and a moment later Rockefeller shuffled up, his hobbles
not permitting much in the way of pace, although he could get about
sufficiently to feed during the night.
"Oh no, indeed you must not! I should be so horribly frightened lest
they should shoot you or the horse!" cried poor Nealie, who had
privately made up her mind that she could never let Rumple out of her
sight again, because he was always getting into pickles.
"I would let him go, Nealie. He may be able to track those men and save
the drovers hours of vain searching; then in return, perhaps, they will
help us right our wagon. And we shall want some help there; I can see
that plainly enough," said Rupert quietly. Then Nealie gave way at once,
as she mostly did when Rupert undertook to advise her, for he certainly
made up in wisdom what he lacked in bodily strength.
She struggled out of the wreckage of the wagon, and, having caught
Rockefeller, no difficult task, since she never went empty handed to the
work, she hoisted Rumple on to his back, then, slipping the hobbles, saw
the two slink off in the darkness by the way the men had gone.