This night she had courage to sit back at the edge of the camp-fire circle, and listen. They were a merry lot, mostly ranchers and horse-raisers. One of them had been a Texas Ranger, and he told bloody tales which made Terrill’s flesh creep. Another of the group, a stockman from the Brazos River, talked a good deal about the L’lano Estacado and the Comanche Indians. On a former hunt he, with comrade hunters, had been camping along the Red River, and had narrowly missed losing their scalps.

“Them Comanches air shore gettin’ bad,” he said, shaking a shaggy head. “An’ it’s this heah buffalo-huntin’ thet’s rilin’ them. Some day Texas will have to whip off not only the Comanches, but the Arapahoes, the Kiowas, the Cheyennes, mebbe all the Plains Injuns.”

“Wal, I reckon we’re too early an’ too fer south fer the Comanches at this time of year,” remarked another. “Buffalo herds comin’ up from the Rio Grande won’t be as far as the Red River.”

“We’ll strike them this side of Colorado,” replied the red-faced hunter. “Which is a darn good thing, fer thet river ain’t no slouch to cross. Our friend Lambeth heah would have hell.”

“No, he could haid the Colorado. Fair to middlin’ road. But I don’t know the country west.”

Terrill might indeed have been a boy, considering the sensations aroused in her by this casual talk of hostile Indians, the Staked Plains, dangerous rivers, stampeding buffalo, and the like. But sometimes the lamentable fact that she was a girl forced itself upon her when she lay in bed unable to sleep, prey to feminine emotions that she could never dispel, yet all the while tingling with the wonder and zest of her existence.

Several days later, Terrill, riding with Sambo, somewhat behind the other wagons, imagined she heard something unusual.

“Listen, Sambo,” she whispered, turning her ear to the south. Had she only imagined that she heard something?

“I doan heah nuffin’,” replied the black.

“Maybe I was wrong. … No! There it comes again.”

“Lud, Massa Rill, I sho hopes yo doan heah somethin’ like thunder.”

“That’s just it, Sambo. … Rumble of low thunder. Listen!”

“I doan heah it yet. Mebbe storm down dat way.”

“Sambo, it cain’t be ordinary thunder,” cried Terrill, excitedly. “It doesn’t stop. It keeps right on. … It’s getting louder.”

“By gar! I heahs it now, Massa Rill,” returned the negro. “I knows what dat is. Dar’s de buffalo! Dat’s de main herd, sho as I’se born.”

“Main herd!—Oh, that hunter Hudkins was wrong, then. He said the main herd was not due yet.”

“Dey’s comin’ an’ dey’s runnin’, Massa Rill.”

The rumble had grown appreciably louder, more consistent and deeper, with a menacing note. Lambeth and the saddle-horses had vanished in a dusty haze. Terrill thought she noted a quickening in the lope of the buffalo passing, closer pressing together of the lines, a gradual narrowing of the space around the wagons.

“Oh, Sambo, is it a stampede?” cried Terrill, suddenly seized by fright. “What has become of Dad? What will we do?”

“I dunno, Missy. I’se heahed a stampede, but I nebber was in one. Dis is gittin’ bad. It sho is.