As the maddened troop drew nigh, the camp horses began to snort and tremble violently, and when the rush of the wild steeds was almost upon them, they became ungovernable with terror, broke their halters and hobbles, and dashed wildly about.  To add to the confusion at that moment, a cloud passed over the moon and threw the whole scene into deep obscurity.  Blind with terror, which was probably increased by the din of their own mad flight, the galloping troop came on, and with a sound like the continuous roar of thunder that for an instant drowned the yell of dog and man they burst upon the camp, trampling over packs and skins, and dried meat, etc., in their headlong speed, and overturning several of the smaller tents.  In another moment they swept out upon the plain beyond, and were soon lost in the darkness of the night, while the yelping of dogs, as they vainly pursued them, mingled and gradually died away with the distant thunder of their retreat.

This was a stampede, one of the most extraordinary scenes that can be witnessed in the western wilderness.

“Lend a hand, Henri,” shouted Joe, who was struggling with a powerful horse.  “Wot’s comed over yer brains, man?  This brute’ll git off if you don’t look sharp.”

Dick and Henri both answered to the summons, and they succeeded in throwing the struggling animal on its side and holding it down until its excitement was somewhat abated.  Pee-eye-em had also been successful in securing his favourite hunter:  but nearly every other horse belonging to the camp had broken loose and joined the whirlwind gallop.  But they gradually dropped out, and before morning the most of them were secured by their owners.  As there were at least two thousand horses and an equal number of dogs in the part of the Indian camp which had been thus overrun by the wild mustangs, the turmoil, as may be imagined, was prodigious!  Yet, strange to say, no accident of a serious nature occurred beyond the loss of several chargers.

In the midst of this exciting scene there was one heart which beat with a nervous vehemence that well-nigh burst it.  This was the heart of Dick Varley’s horse, Charlie.  Well known to him was that distant rumbling sound that floated on the night air into the fur-traders’ camp, where he was picketed close to Cameron’s tent.  Many a time had he heard the approach of such a wild troop, and often, in days not long gone by, had his shrill neigh rung out as he joined and led the panic-stricken band.  He was first to hear the sound, and by his restive actions to draw the attention of the fur-traders to it.  As a precautionary measure they all sprang up and stood by their horses to soothe them, but as a brook with a belt of bushes and quarter of a mile of plain intervened between their camp and the mustangs as they flew past, they had little or no trouble in restraining them.  Not so, however, with Charlie.  At the very moment that his master was congratulating himself on the supposed security of his position, he wrenched the halter from the hand of him who held it, burst through the barrier of felled trees that had been thrown round the camp, cleared the brook at a bound, and with a wild hilarious neigh resumed his old place in the ranks of the free-born mustangs of the prairie.