"You couldn't go a hundred feet before they'd overtake you!" shouted
Jerry. "Let's see if we can't frighten 'em. Take off your hats, jump
up and down, and yell like mad. If we can force 'em to separate and go
on either side of us, we'll be all right!"

He started to swing his hat in the air, and prepared to let out a
series of yells in imitation of an Indian war-whoop.

"Don't!" cried the professor quickly.

"Why not?" asked Jerry. "It's the only way to stop 'em."

"I know a better, and a surer way," replied the scientist. "Get the
rattlesnakes between ourselves and the cattle! Those steers will never
go near a rattlesnake den, no matter how frightened they are, nor how
badly stampeded! Quick! Here they come!"

The cattle were scarcely two hundred feet away, and were maddened by
the sight of unmounted persons, something to which they were
unaccustomed, and which thoroughly frightened them. The ground was
trembling with their hoof-beats, and the rattle of the horns, as they
clashed together, was like the murmur of cannibal tom-toms.

The professor grabbed Bob, who was nearest him, and swung the boy
around, so as to get the nest of rattlesnakes between them and the
steers. Ned and Jerry followed. The snakes, now all aroused, were
rattling away like half a hundred electric batteries working at once.

Would the professor's ruse succeed? Would the steers be afraid to come
over the deadly reptiles, to trample down the little group, which the