There was not a sound but the clatter and click of split hoofs on the hard road as Dunham went on his way; not a whoop out of a cowboy, not a word from the Kansas drovers. The silence was more dramatic than the noise of a fight.
This portentous stillness had the opposite of a calming effect on the cattle. They were conscious of the unusual conditions surrounding them on the march, where the racket of their human guardians hitherto had been their constant assurance that all was well. They crowded forward in little starts of panic, little rushes that massed them and disorganized the orderly formation.
The cowboys riding alertly on the flanks of the long line were quick to press forward and subdue these incipient stampedes, with many an anxious look back to see if the rear had cleared the ford. The cattle were so nervous a blowing leaf might have set them off on a blind rush away from that indefinable terror of silence.
The Kansas cowmen who watched this dark column of beef hurrying by were fully conscious of the flighty condition. That impending threat of a stampede was a greater restraint over their passions than the counsel of the older and wiser heads. Any man could see where a stampede would put them, with some of their own herds not five miles away.
Bill Dunham rode on without a glance behind. His business was in Pawnee Bend; it looked as if he intended to go right on without a stop.
Dunham did not know whether the Kansas cattlemen
