her point was
doing the same and Pehansan from a third place was discharging a volley.
The great beast, encircled by stinging death, threw up his head, uttered
a tremendous bellow of agony and despair and crashed to the earth, where
he breathed out his life.

Will, trembling from his exertions and limping from the broken snowshoe
approached cautiously, still viewing that huge, hairy form with wonder
and some apprehension. Nor were Roka and Pehansan free from the same
nervous strain and awe.

"What is it?" asked Will, "a mammoth or a mastodon?"

"Don't know mammoth and don't know mastodon," replied Pehansan, shaking
his head, "but do know it is the biggest of all animals my eyes have
ever seen."

"It is a woods or mountain buffalo that has far outgrown its kind, just
as there are giants among men," said Roka.

"If this were a man and he bore the same relation to his species he
would be thirteen or fourteen feet tall," said Will, his voice still
shaking a little. "Why, he'd make most elephants ashamed to be so puny
and small."

"He, too, like the bears, came out of the far North," said Pehansan.
"Maybe there is not another in the world like him."

"That hide of his is thick with arrows," said Will, "but in so big a
skin I don't think the arrow holes will amount to much. We ought to have
it. We must carry so grand a trophy back to the village to-night."

Roka shook his head.

"Not to-night," he said. "We three be strong, but we cannot move the
body of this mighty beast, and so we cannot take off the skin."

"I will go to the village and bring many people," said Pehansan.

Again the wise Roka shook his head.

"No," he said, "we three will stay by the bull. You are fast on your
snowshoes, Pehansan, and you can shoot your arrows swift, hard and true,
but you would never reach the village, which is many miles from here.
The fierce wild animals would devour you. We must clear the snow away as
fast as we can and build fires all about us. The beasts have already
scented the dead bull, and will come to eat him and us."

The shadows of the twilight were falling already, and they heard the
faint howls of the meat-eaters on the slopes. Will and his comrades,
taking off their snowshoes, worked with frantic energy, clearing away
the snow with their mittened hands, bringing vast quantities of the dead
wood, lighting several fires in a circle about the bull, and keeping
themselves, with the surplus wood, inside the circle