Over his shoulders hung the fresh hide of a cow, with the skin of the
head and the horns protruding above his head.
He gave one swift glance at Ted, then threw the hide to the ground and
set out at a run through the plunging beasts.
Ted was hampered by the cattle getting in his way, and was not making
much progress, but he was beating the horned beasts aside with his
quirt.
It was possible even yet that the man who was running from him would
escape, and this was what Ted was trying with all his might to prevent.
Ted knew why the man was among the cattle protected from them by his
disguise of the cow's hide.
He had been hamstringing them by the wholesale.
In one day the inhuman brute could destroy for range use a whole herd.
In the meantime, the cattle were growing wilder and wilder from the pain
caused by the hamstringer's knife, the wild career of the unmounted man
among them, and Ted and Stella pressing through them from the rear with
shouts and cracking quirts.
"Great Scott! They'll get him!" shouted Ted, reining in his pony.
The furious steers had turned their attention to the man on foot, and
were surging about him with angry bellowings, charging upon him, and
crowding him.
He was in a very perilous position, and it was only that the cattle were
herded so close together that he had not gone down sooner.
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