If we'd
only known it, we could have made it in half an hour more last night."
When Bud had ridden away Ted took stock of the situation, and found that
he had a difficult problem to solve.
Under ordinary circumstances it would have been easy to snake the cattle
out of the coulee by roping them around the horns and dragging them out
with the ponies, but it was utterly impossible to do that with a couple
of thousand of them.
While he was looking things over he became aware that Stella had ridden
away. He looked anxiously after her, for he knew her propensity for
getting into trouble when she rode alone. Soon she dropped out of sight
behind a swell in the prairie with a flash in the sunlight of her
scarlet jacket.
Ted was still studying the situation, riding up and down the edge of the
coulee, trying to figure out some plan of rescue, and noting the cattle
that were down, and which were rapidly being trampled to death by the
other beasts, or being smothered by the snow.
The prospect was not a pleasing one to the young cow boss, for he saw
the profits of the venture fading away hourly.
Suddenly a faint, shrill yell reached his ears, and he wheeled his pony
in the direction from which it came.
Stella's scarlet jacket was coming toward him in a whirlwind of flying
snow, and he rushed toward her.
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