“For the love of tripe!  How did you do it?” asked Tom.

“Bless my peck of oats!” gasped Mr. Damon.  “It’s a good thing we had Rad along!”

“All mules am alike,” said the colored man with a grin.  “An dish yeah one ain’t much different from mah Boomerang.  I guess he’s a sorter cousin.”

“Come on!” yelled San Pedro.  “No time to lose.  Make for the rocks!”

Tom, Ned and Mr. Damon sprinted then, and there was need to, for the foremost of the galloping horses was not a hundred feet away.  Then came Eradicate, leading the mule that had at last consented to hurry.  The natives, with San Pedro, were already at the rocks, waiting for the white hunters with the deadly electric rifles.

“If they stampede our mules we’ll be in a pickle!” murmured Ned.

“I guess those ropes will hold unless they bite them through,” remarked Tom.

“Yes, they sure hold,” cried San Pedro, and indeed one had to shout now to be heard above the thundering of the horses.  Now the tethered mules were lost to sight in the multitude of the other steeds all about them.

“Come on, Ned!” yelled Tom, as he sighted his rifle.  “Pump it into them!  We must turn them, or they may come over this way, and if they do it will be all up with us.”

“Shoot to kill?” asked Ned, as he drew back the firing lever of his electric rifle.

“No, only a stunning charge.  Those horses are valuable, and there’s no use killing them.  All we want to do is to turn them aside.”

“That’s right,” agreed Mr. Damon, forgetting in the excitement of the moment to bless himself or anything.  “We’ll only stun them.”

The rifles were quickly adjusted to send out a comparatively weak charge of electricity, and then they were trained on the dense mass of horses, while the three marksmen began working the firing levers.

At first, though horse after horse fell to the ground, stunned, there was no appreciable effect on the thousands in the drove.  The poor mules were hidden from sight, though by reason of divisions in the living stream of animals it could still be told where they were tethered, and where the horses separated to go past them.  Fortunately the ropes and pegs held.

“Fire faster!” cried Tom.  “Shoot across the front of them, and try to turn them to one side.”

From the rocks, behind which the natives and our friends crouched, there came a steady stream of electric fire.  Horse after horse went down, stunned but not badly hurt, and in a few hours the beasts would feel no ill effects.  The firing was redoubled, and then there came a break in the steady stream of horseflesh.

Some hesitated and sought to turn back.  Others, behind, pressed them on, and then, as if in fear at the unknown and unseen power that was laying low animal after animal, the great body, of horses, suddenly turned at right angles to their course and broke away.  There were now two bodies of the wild runaways, those that had passed the tethered mules, and those that had swung off.  The stampede had been broken.