Ted's horse was quite unmanageable. Straight ahead, never swerving, with a hundred more pounding behind him, man and horse rushed. It soon became apparent that it was more than a runaway for Ted; it was a race for life. Those fear-consumed, mad, unreasoning brutes behind him were heedless of the fact that a man was in front. Without heed of the direction in which he was going, the lad spurred his horse, hoping to keep safely ahead--not trying now to check its career. He knew that to turn aside was impossible. All he cared for was to keep ahead. And, in spite of the extra burden his beast was carrying, the pursuers gained nothing on him.
Fear filled the lad's heart. If it had been an ordinary death that threatened him, he would have faced it bravely enough; but the thought of being ground to death beneath the hoofs of those equine fiends behind him terrorized him until he almost lost sense of everything but his desire to escape.
It would have frightened any man. The weird shrieks, the bellows-like breathing of his own and of the other horses, the hollow, muffled, pounding of hoofs on the hard, sun-baked prairie, the whistle of the wind about his ears, all combined to make his brain reel. He thought nothing of what was ahead, until it was nearly too late.
He had a dim recollection of a feeling, a foreboding that all was not right in front. The pale glimmer of the moon made the earth appear as though it suddenly dropped away into nothingness. Like a flash it came home to him that he was close to the edge of Rushing Cañon, a great cleft, dropping to a depth of five hundred feet, sheer to the bottom, where a roaring torrent raged.
Something like a moan passed his lips. He felt himself wondering which would be the better death: to have the life stamped out of him, or to be dashed to pieces below.
He had only a hundred yards to go--seventy-five--fifty! Thirty! The stampede was not a hundred feet behind him. Another minute, and he would be falling. He tugged once again at the reins, but he might as well have pulled at a stump. Another moan broke from him; he kicked his feet free from the stirrups, gave a mad spring outward, and fell headlong to the ground. His horse made a struggle to stop itself, failed, and went hurtling through space.