the settlers with meat and game--venison, the standing dish--now and
then bear hams, much relished--and, when the place is upon prairie-land,
the flesh of the antelope and buffalo. The wild turkey, too--grandest
of all game birds--is on the professional hunter's list for the larder;
the lynx and panther he will kill for their pelts; but squirrels,
racoons, rabbits, and other such "varmints," he disdains to meddle with,
leaving them to the amateur sportsman, and the darkey.

Usually the professional votary of Saint Hubert is of solitary habit,
and prefers stalking alone. There are some, however, of more social
inclining, who hunt in couples; one of the pair being almost universal a
veteran, the other a young man--as in the case of Sime Woodley and Ned
Heywood. By the inequality of age the danger of professional jealousy
is avoided; the younger looking up to his senior, and treating him with
the deference due to greater knowledge and experience.

Just such a brace of professionals has come out with the Armstrong
colony--their names, Alec Hawkins and Cris Tucker--the former an old
bear-hunter, who has slain his hundreds; the latter, though an excellent
marksman, in the art of _venerie_ but a tyro compared with his partner.

Since their arrival on the San Saba, they have kept the settlement
plentifully supplied in meat; chiefly venison of the black-tailed deer,
with which the bottom-land abounds. Turkeys, too, in any quantity;
these noble birds thriving in the congenial climate of Texas, with its
nuts and berry-bearing trees.

But there is a yet nobler game, to the hunting of which Hawkins and his
younger associate aspire; both being eager to add it to the list of
their trophies. It is that which has tempted many an English Nimrod to
take three thousand miles of sea voyage across the Atlantic, and by land
nearly as many more--the buffalo. Hawkins and Tucker, though having
quartered the river bottom, for ten miles above and below the
mission-building, have as yet come across none of these grand
quadrupeds, nor seen "sign" of them.

This day, when Armstrong has his dinner party, the hunters bethink
themselves of ascending to the upper plain, in the hope of there finding
the game so much desired.

The place promising best is on the opposite side of the valley, to reach
which the river must be crossed.

There are two fords at nearly equal distances from the old
mission-house, one about ten miles above, the other a