t just back of the foreleg of one of the
bulls. The stricken beast made a single plunging dive and then rolled
over dead. Being on the fringe of the herd he was not trampled upon,
and none of his companions paid any attention to him. The bison is--or
rather _was_--a stupid creature, his own destruction often resulting
from his lack of ordinary intelligence.

Deerfoot waited until the last animal had passed, when he went forward
to where the carcass of the game lay and deftly extracted its tongue.
He did not touch any other portion, but, washing the delicacy in the
stream, carried it to the small grove of trees which he had fixed upon
in his mind as the place of the encampment of the Nez Perces, on their
first day after leaving their village.

Before he reached the shelter of the clump of trees the quick eye of
the Shawanoe saw the imprints of hoofs, and signs of a party of
horsemen having halted at the spot. Chief Amokeat and his Nez Perces
had made their first meal on fish drawn from the lake, as was shown by
the fragments of their feast scattered round. Considerable ashes
indicated the spot where a fire had been kindled, in the usual
primitive manner of spinning a light pointed stick, whose sharpened end
was thrust into another dry branch.

Thus Deerfoot's calculations proved to be right. He had reached the
scene of the midday halt of the Nez Perces by traveling about
two-thirds of the distance of his predecessors. With his flint and
steel he soon had a blaze going. Over it he broiled the bison tongue,
cut into thin strips, and ate his fill. The meal was a big one for him,
and he would not go out of his way to procure any more food for
twenty-four hours or more. Taking a long draught from the cold,
crystalline waters, he resumed his journey, which was due north, his
blanket fastened about his shoulders, and his rifle sometimes resting
in the crook made by bending his left arm at the elbow, after the style
of modern sportsmen, held sometimes in a trailing position, and again
reposing upon his shoulder.

For two miles or more he kept to the trail, inasmuch as it was direct
and nothing was to be gained by leaving it. With his senses alert, he
finally turned to the right, in order to take advantage of a mass of
rocks on ground so elevated that a more extensive view than the former
one could be secured. He climbed as nimbly as a monkey to the top,
glanced over the many square miles spread out before his gaze and then