, with a laugh, "and Moonlight
helped him. But perhaps it is also because I have white blood in me.
My mother was a pale-face."

"That accounts for Skipping Rabbit being so ready to laugh, and so fond
of fun," said the youth.

"Was the father of Eaglenose a pale-face?" asked the child.

"No; why?"

"Because Eaglenose is as ready to laugh and as fond of fun as Skipping
Rabbit. If his father was not a pale-face, he could not I think, have
been very red."

What reply the youth would have made to this we cannot tell, for at that
moment scouts came in with the news that buffalo had been seen grazing
on the plain below.

Instantly the bustle of preparation for the chase began. The women were
ordered to encamp and get ready to receive the meat. Scouts were sent
out in various directions, and the hunters advanced at a gallop.

The region through which they were passing at the time was marked by
that lovely, undulating, park-like scenery which lies in some parts
between the rugged slopes of the mountain range and the level expanse of
the great prairies. Its surface was diversified by both kinds of
landscape--groups of trees, little knolls, stretches of forest, and
occasional cliffs, being mingled with wide stretches of grassy plain,
with rivulets here and there to add to the wild beauty of the scene.

After a short ride over the level ground the Blackfeet came to a fringe
of woodland, on the other side of which they were told by the scouts a
herd of buffalo had been seen browsing on a vast sweep of open plain.

Riding cautiously through the wood, they came to the edge of it and
dismounted, while Rushing River and Eaglenose advanced alone and on foot
to reconnoitre.

Coming soon to that outer fringe of bushes, beyond which there was no
cover, they dropped on hands and knees and went forward in that manner
until they reached a spot whence a good view of the buffalo could be
obtained. The black eyes of the two Indians glittered, and the red of
their bronzed faces deepened with emotion as they gazed. And truly it
was a sight well calculated to stir to the very centre men whose chief
business of life was the chase, and whose principal duty was to procure
food for their women and children, for the whole plain away to the
horizon was dotted with groups of those monarchs of the western
prairies. They were grazing quietly, as though such things as the
rattle of guns, the whiz of arrows, the thunder of horse-hoofs, and