Sambo’s team came on grandly, tongues out, eyes like fire, still under control. Then Terrill saw the negro turn to shoot back at the charging buffalo. The red flame of the gun appeared to burst right in the faces of the maddened beasts. They thundered forward, apparently about to swarm over the wagon.

Clamped with horror, hanging on to the jolting wagon, Terrill saw the buffalo close in alongside the very wheels. A shroud of dust lifted, choking and half blinding her. Sambo blurred in her sight, though she saw the red spurt of his gun. She heard no more. Her eyes seemed stopped. She was an atom in a maelstrom. The stench of the beasts clogged her nostrils. A terrible sense of being carried along in a flood possessed her. The horses, the wagons, were keeping pace with the stampede. Dixie leaped frantically, sometimes narrowly missing the wagon. Just outside the wheels, rubbing them, swept huge, hairy, horned monsters that surely kept him running straight.

The agony of suspense was insupportable. Terrill knew she soon would leap out under the rolling hoofs. It could not last much longer. The horses would fall or fail, and then—. Sambo’s gun burned red through the dust. Again the wall on each side moved ahead, faster, and appeared to draw away. Little by little the space widened. Terrill turned to gaze ahead. The herd had split. Dimly she saw an X-shaped space splitting, widening away from a high gray object.

Terrill lost the clearness of her faculties then and seemed clutched between appalling despair and hope. But surely the wagon slowed, careened, almost upset. Then it stopped and Terrill closed her eyes on the verge of collapse.

But nothing happened. There was no crash—no pounding of her flesh. And again she could hear. Her ears registered once more the fearful trampling roar. She felt the wagon shaking under her. Then she opened her eyes.