in his favor. Next morning he was
skirting a ridge of broken buttes with Joe Ferris, near the upper
waters of the Little Cannonball west of Lang's camp over the Montana
line, when suddenly both ponies threw up their heads and snuffed the
air, turning their muzzles toward a coulee that sloped gently toward
the creek-bottom they were traversing. Roosevelt slipped off his pony
and ran quickly but cautiously up the side of the ravine. In the soft
soil at the bottom he saw the round prints of a bison's hoof.

He came upon the buffalo an instant later, grazing slowly up the
valley. Both wind and shelter were good, and he ran close. The bull
threw back his head and cocked his tail in the air.

Joe Ferris, who had followed close at Roosevelt's heels, pointed out a
yellow spot on the buffalo, just back of the shoulder. "If you hit him
there," he whispered, "you'll get him right through the heart."

It seemed to Joe that the Easterner was extraordinarily cool, as he
aimed deliberately and fired. With amazing agility the buffalo bounded
up the opposite side of the ravine, seemingly heedless of two more
bullets aimed at his flank.

Joe was ready to throw up his hands in despair. But suddenly they saw
blood pouring from the bison's mouth and nostrils. The great bull
rushed to the ridge at a lumbering gallop, and disappeared.

They found him lying in the next gully, dead, as Joe Ferris remarked,
"as Methusalem's cat."

Roosevelt, with all his intellectual maturity, was a good deal of a
boy, and the Indian war-dance he executed around the prostrate buffalo
left nothing in the way of delight unexpressed. Joe watched the
performance open-mouthed.

"I never saw any one so enthused in my life," he said in after days,
"and, by golly, I was enthused myself for more reasons than one. I was
plumb tired out, and, besides, he was so eager to shoot his first
buffalo that it somehow got into my blood; and I wanted to see him
kill his first one as badly as he wanted to kill it."

Roosevelt, out of the gladness of his heart, then and there presented
him with a hundred dollars; so there was another reason for Joe to be
happy.

They returned to Lang's, chanting paeans of victory. Early next day
Roosevelt returned with Joe to the place where they had left the
buffalo and with endless labor skinned the huge beast and brought the
head and slippery hide to camp.

The next morning Roosevelt took his departure.

Gregor Lang watched the mount