over a
knoll, and then trailing them. Where the grass was long, as it was for
the first four or five miles, this was a work of no difficulty, and they
did not break their gait, only glancing now and then at the trial. As
the sun rose and the day became warm, their breathing grew quicker; and
the sweat rolled off their faces as they ran across the rough prairie
sward, up and down the long inclines, now and then shifting their heavy
rifles from one shoulder to the other. But they were in good training,
and they did not have to halt. At last they reached stretches of bare
ground, sun-baked and grassless, where the trail grew dim; and here they
had to go very slowly, carefully examining the faint dents and marks
made in the soil by the heavy hoofs, and unravelling the trail from
the mass of old footmarks. It was tedious work, but it enabled them to
completely recover their breath by the time that they again struck
the grassland; and but a few hundred yards from the edge, in a slight
hollow, they saw the four buffaloes just entering a herd of fifty or
sixty that were scattered out grazing. The herd paid no attention to
the new-comers, and these immediately began to feed greedily. After
a whispered consultation, the two hunters crept back, and made a long
circle that brought them well to leeward of the herd, in line with
a slight rise in the ground. They then crawled up to this rise and,
peering through the tufts of tall, rank grass, saw the unconscious
beasts a hundred and twenty-five or fifty yards away. They fired
together, each mortally wounding his animal, and then, rushing in as
the herd halted in confusion, and following them as they ran, impeded by
numbers, hurry, and panic, they eventually got three more.

On another occasion the same two hunters nearly met with a frightful
death, being overtaken by a vast herd of stampeded buffaloes. All the
animals that go in herds are subject to these instantaneous attacks
of uncontrollable terror, under the influence of which they become
perfectly mad, and rush headlong in dense masses on any form of death.
Horses, and more especially cattle, often suffer from stampedes; it is
a danger against which the cowboys are compelled to be perpetually on
guard. A band of stampeded horses, sweeping in mad terror up a valley,
will dash against a rock or tree with such violence as to leave several
dead animals at its base, while the survivors race on without halting;
they will overturn and d