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Presently the blue of his eyes went all black, and with strange unwavering concentration he gazed straight before him. A light spread over his face, his hands felt for the chair-arms and held them firmly. He began: "I first remember swinging in a blanket from a pine-tree at a buffalo- hunt while my mother cooked the dinner.
The route selected for the march was along the emigrant road across the Plains, first defined fifty years ago by trappers and voyageurs following the trail by which the buffalo crossed the mountains, described by Lieutenant-Colonel Fremont, in the reports of his earlier explorations, and subsequently adopted by all the overland emigration across the continent.
The buffalo began to crowd away from the point toward which we were approaching, and a gap was opened in the side of the herd. We entered it, still restraining our excited horses. Every instant the tumult was thickening. The buffalo, pressing together in large bodies, crowded away from us on every hand.
"You are nice men, you are!" said he, after an ejaculation not necessary to be recorded, "to set a man-trap before your door every morning to catch your visitors." Then he sat down upon Henry Chatillon's saddle. We tossed a piece of buffalo robe to Jack, who was looking about in some embarrassment. He spread it on the ground, and took his seat, with a stolid countenance, at his brother's side.
The hunters, mounted on horseback and armed with bows and arrows, encircle the herd and gradually drive them into a plain or an open place fit for the movements of horse; they then ride in among them, and singling out a buffalo, a female being preferred, go as close as possible and wound her with arrows till they think they have given the mortal stroke; when they pursue another, till the quiver is exhausted.
There was nothing very cheering in their faces nor in the news they brought. "We have been ten miles from here," said Shaw. "We climbed the highest butte we could find, and could not see a buffalo or Indian; nothing but prairie for twenty miles around us." Henry's horse was quite disabled by clambering up and down the sides of ravines, and Shaw's was severely fatigued.
The others were halted, and Dave, Barringford, and White Buffalo went forward on foot, keeping themselves out of sight behind a row of bushes and a series of low rocks. Before them was a fair-sized glade, in the midst of which was located the Indian village, consisting of a dozen or more wigwams, all of good dimensions and each gaudily painted with many signs and symbols.
No rope swung above his head, so he sheered off and ran as fast as he could to cut ahead of the bunch. But his rider with knee and rein forced him in. After a moment, to his astonishment, he found himself running alongside a big steer. Button had never hunted buffalo Buck Johnson had. The Colt's forty-five barked once, and then again.
One was the muster-call of an ordinary Wolf, the other the answer of a very big male, not a pair in this case, but mother and son Yellow Wolf and Duskymane. They came trotting together down the Buffalo trail. They paused at the telephone box on the hill and again at the old cottonwood root, and were making for the river when the Hawk in the trap fluttered his wings.
The scout, too, was singing his buffalo bull song in a guttural, lowing chant as he neared the hunting camp. Within arrow-shot he paused again, while the usual ceremonies were enacted for his reception. This done, he was seated with the leaders in a chosen place. "It was a long run," he said, "but there were no difficulties. I found the first herd directly north of here.
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