r boys in charge of the wagon, began to hunt for the buffalo
in the rather swampy bush that stretched from the further bank to
the slope of the first hills, eight or ten miles away. I did not
much expect to find them, as the Basuto had said that they had
gone over these hills, but either he lied or they had moved back
again.

Not half a mile from the river bank, just as I was about to
dismount to stalk a fine waterbuck of which I caught sight
standing among some coarse grass and bushes, my eye fell upon
buffalo spoor that from its appearance I knew could not be more
than a few hours old. Evidently the beasts had been feeding here
during the night and at dawn had moved away to sleep in the dry
bush nearer the hills. Beckoning to Anscombe, who fortunately
had not seen the waterbuck, at which he would certainly have
fired, thereby perhaps frightening the buffalo, I showed him the
spoor that we at once started to follow.

Soon it led us into other spoor, that of a whole herd of thirty
or forty beasts indeed, which made our task quite easy, at least
till we came to harder ground, for the animals had gone a long
way. An hour or more later, when we were about seven miles from
the river, I perceived ahead of us, for we were now almost at the
foot of the hills, a cool and densely-wooded kloof.

"That is where they will be," I said. "Now come on carefully and
make no noise."

We rode to the wide mouth of the kloof where the signs of the
buffalo were numerous and fresh, dismounted and tied our horses
to a thorn, so as to approach them silently on foot. We had not
gone two hundred yards through the bush when suddenly about fifty
paces away, standing broadside on in the shadow between two
trees, I saw a splendid old bull with a tremendous pair of horns.

"Shoot," I whispered to Anscombe, "you will never get a better
chance. It is the sentinel of the herd."

He knelt down, his face quite white with excitement, and covered
the bull with his Express.

"Keep cool," I whispered again, "and aim behind the shoulder,
half-way down."

I don't think he understood me, for at that moment off went the
rifle. He hit the beast somewhere, as I heard the bullet clap,
but not fatally, for it turned and lumbered off up the kloof,
apparently unhurt, whereon he sent the second barrel after it, a
clean miss this time. Then of a sudden all about us appeared
buffaloes that had, I suppose, been sleeping invisible to us.
These, with sno