When they mounted their saddles they could look over the top of the little hill and observe everything easily without being seen; for the hill-top commanded a range of the corrals and a view of the fronts of the barns and sheds which opened upon the fenced enclosures.  The largest and longest of these buildings was now plainly visible, for a long arm of fire reached above the roof on one side of the low shed and by this growing light the other barns, the glimmering-eyed horses and cattle of the corrals, the trees about the house, the house itself, were in turn visible, though vaguely, and at times, as the flame lapsed, all were lost in a flood of swift darkness.  Once more that unhuman shriek echoed from hill to hill and from building to building.  It was Satan in his box stall.  The flames were eating through the partition, and the stallion was mad with fear.

Lights flashed, here and there, in the big ranch house; and from the bunk-house on the farther side of the corrals rose a volley of curses and yells of dismay.  The cattle began milling blindly, bellowing and stamping, and the horses ranged at a mad gallop back and forth across their corrals, wild-eyed with terror.  It was like the tumult of a battle, and sharper than a trumpet a new sound cut through the din—­it was a short, high whistle, twice repeated.  An answer came from the burning barn—­the long, strong neighing of the stallion.

“D’ye hear?” muttered Mac Strann.  “It’s the hoss talkin’ to his master!”

“And there he comes!” said Haw-Haw Langley.  “Runnin’ like the wind!”

The flame, picked up by the gale, tore for itself a wider breathing space through the roof and sent up an audibly roaring column of blinding red.  By that light, Mac Strann, following Haw-Haw’s directing arm, saw a lithe figure vault over the fence on the farther side of the corral and dart forward among the milling cattle.

Now, when cattle begin to mill it takes a brave man on a brave, well-trained horse to trust his chances in the midst of that ocean of tossing horns.  But this man ventured it on foot.  Mac Strann could follow him easily, for the man’s hat was off, and the firelight glittered on his black hair.  That glimmering head darted here and there among the circling cattle.  Now it was lost, swamped, to all appearances, under a score of trampling hooves.  Again it reappeared on the further side.  Mac Strann could see the runner in a comparatively open space, racing like a trained sprinter, and he headed straight towards a wall of tossing horns.  They were long-horns, and one sway of those lowered heads could drive the hard, sharp point through and through the body of a man.  Yet straight at this impassable wall the stranger rushed, like a warrior in his Berserker madness leaping naked upon a hedge of spears.  At the verge of the danger the man sprang high into the air.  Two leaps, from back to back among the herd, and he was across the thickest of danger, down once more on the ground, and dodging past the outskirts of the bellowing cows.  Over the nearer fence he vaulted and disappeared into the smoke which vomitted from the mouth of the burning barn.