Her expression attracted Canby's attention even before she pointed and cried sharply: "Look!"
Aunt Lizzie was still busy with her pebbles, a tiny, tragic figure she looked, in view of what was happening, as she walked along in leisurely fashion, stopping every step or two to pick up and examine a stone that attracted her attention.
The herd of long-horns had come closer, but one had drawn out from the others and was shaking its head as it trotted down upon her.
Wallie had long since abandoned the pony he was leading, and with all the speed his own was capable of, was doing his best to intercept the animal before it reached her. But he was still a long way off and even as Helene cried out the steer broke into a gallop.
Canby, too, instantly grasped the situation.
"If I only had a rifle!"
"Perhaps we can turn it! We'll have to make an awful run for it but we can try!"
They had already gathered the reins and were spurring their horses down the declivity.
Canby's thoroughbred leaped into the air as the steel pricked it and Helene was soon left behind. She saw that she could figure only as a spectator, so she slowed down and watched what followed in fascinated horror.
Canby was considerably farther off than Wallie, in the beginning, but the racing blood in the former's horse's veins responded gallantly to the urge of its rider. It stretched out and laid down to its work like a hare with the hounds behind it, quickly equalizing the distance.
Aunt Lizzie was poking at a rock with her toe when she looked up suddenly and saw her danger. The steer with a spread of horns like antlers and tapering to needle points was rushing down upon her, infuriated.
For a moment she stood, weak with terror, unable to move, until her will asserted itself and then, shrieking, she ran as fast as her stiff old legs could carry her.
Wallie and Canby reached the steer almost together. A goodly distance still intervened between it and Aunt Lizzie, but the gap was shortening with sickening rapidity and Helene grew cold as she saw that, try as they might, they could not head it.
The animal seemed to be conscious only of its fleeing victim. When she ran, her flight appeared to excite and enrage it further, for it bawled with anger. The fluttering petticoats were a challenge, and the steer was bent on reaching and destroying the strange object with the weapons nature had given it. It was accustomed to horsemen and had no fear of them, but it saw a menace in the little old woman screaming just ahead, so it ignored Canby and Wallie, and they could not swerve it.