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wasn’t at all interested in going either, and he did a little bucking dance instead, rearing back away from the sea door. Shad, who knew horses better than they knew themselves, let Red get away with this. He not only let him back off, but turned Red around asthough they were in agreement and were now going to ride in the other direction. Then, still holding the reins in his left hand, he put his right hand over Red’s eyes so the big stallion couldn’t see, and he kept turning Red until they were again aimed at the sea door. Then Shad spurred the turned-around stallion fiercely and let go with a deafening cowboy yell that must have rocked the buildings in Vladivostok.
    “ Ahhhhhhh-hawwwww-YIGH !” he bellowed, and Red flew forward. That big roan must have sailed twenty feet out of the sea door before gravity took its natural course and Red realized he’d been double-crossed. But by then it was too late. They both damnere went under in a spray of white foam against the black water, and then they were bobbing up, Red swimming frantically and the rope around spraddle-legged, defiant Old Fooler’s neck tight as a bowstring.
    But tight as the rope was, not one ounce of Old Fooler’s two thousand pounds was planning on going anyplace.
    “Push the bastard!” Slim yelled, and seven or eight of us crowded around Old Fooler, heaving with all our weight. I think what turned the tables was Slim’s pocketknife. Along with pushing, Slim stabbed Old Fooler in the rear. Not where it would do him permanent damage, but it still must have hurt like hell. The big black bull let out a bellow that damnere matched Shad’s cowboy yell and leaped high into the air in the general direction Slim wanted him to go. And when he came down, he was in the Gulf of Peter the Great, complaining loudly and splashing all over the place.
    And, as Shad had thought it would, that kind of broke the ice with the others.
    “Look out!” Slim yelled, and we jumped back from the sea door as probably the only stampede of longhorns on a ship ever recorded in naval history began. There must have been three hundred cows and bulls that suddenly realized, after two months of imprisonment, that there was at last a way out. Once Old Fooler had unintentionally led the way, they couldn’t have cared less ifthey were jumping off Pikes Peak, as long as they were getting out of that hold.
    We were lucky not to get crushed in the wild mass exit.
    And then suddenly, like a snap of the fingers, the stampede stopped in midstream. Longhorns are sort of like people, I guess. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing either most of the time. A big spotted cow with a yearling calf gave a terrified bawl and skidded to a halt at the sea door.
    Evidently taking her word about something being wrong up front, the two hundred or so head behind her slammed on their brakes and now wouldn’t be budged.
    So this is when we used Shad’s “fire.”
    “Levi!” Slim yelled. “Link, Rufe! Crab! Stay with me and light those torches. The rest of you hit the water!” Old Keats and Mushy were the first two mounted and out. The horses didn’t really like the idea, but so many cattle had dived out by then that it must have started to seem like the natural thing to do. Natcho’s big black didn’t argue at all. Chakko, Dixie and Purse went next. And finally Shiny Joe and Big Yawn. Big Yawn was so scared his hands were shaking even before he got aboard his horse.
    “Shiny,” Slim said, “stick close t’ Big Yawn!” And then they were both gone, in almost one gigantic splash.
    I’d already lighted a torch, and we were now lighting others from it. When we all had one or two torches apiece, we ran to the far side of the hold and started yelling our lungs out and scaring the hell out of the cattle with the flaming torches. Slim was up by the spotted cow who’d stopped the first stampede. He picked up her calf and threw it overboard. She must have been mad about it, but this was no