race of bullets, had not the sagacity of the
pony taught him to avoid it. Upon reining in my gallant and discreet
little steed, and turning his head again toward the buffalo, I saw that
he was standing still, and giving as bold a front as was ever offered to
an enemy. Coming to a corresponding attitude, I deliberately reloaded my
rifle, and approached him with the greatest caution; for whether he
intended to wait my second attack, or plunge forward and send me and
Nigger skimming to some unknown corner of the earth, appeared a matter
of doubt not quite made up. After a few brief moments for reconnoitring,
I urged Nigger to advance to within less than thirty paces of where the
bull stood glaring at us, with his curling mane and beard sweeping below
his knees, and his distended jaws dropping foam, scarlet dyed with
blood. Nothing, indeed, can be imagined more ferocious than the wounded
animal looked, fixing the peculiar white balls and black iris of his
eyes upon us, under his shaggy frontlet, with the expression of the
devil in a mood far from funny. Thinking it expedient to bring the
contest to a conclusion without further waste of time, I essayed a
manoeuvre in order to obtain a sight at a more vulnerable part of my
victim's carcass than that which, as I had been given to understand by
Hawkeye, his head presented. But, as the baited grimalkin turns to the
worrying cur, so did the bull turn exactly with my movements, ever
presenting his head, and nothing but his head. This proving exceedingly
wearisome, and quickly exhausting the slender stock of patience with
which nature supplied me at my birth, I resolved to try what a shot
would do in the centre of his forehead, and steadying Nigger for a
moment, snapped my left barrel at him, when with the crack down he
dropped, and spurring forward in the belief that I had given him his
_coup-de-grace_, I was not a little surprised to see him again stagger
to his feet, ready to receive me on his two short black horns, curved in
the best possible shape for the ripping business.

Perceiving, however, that notwithstanding the last bullet had only
flattened on his _os frontis_, he was fast sinking from the internal
hemorrhage caused by the two first, which brought him to a check, I
determined to expend no more valuable ammunition upon him, but inflict a
final thrust or two of cold steel. Reslinging my rifle across my
shoulders, I for the first time couched a lance for a deadly object,