Chet was just as eager and excited as he could be. Dig appeared to be
doubtful of the identity of the moving herd they had spied so far away;
nevertheless, he felt that the venture was momentous.
The chums had not hunted big game frequently enough to approach this
strange herd of grazing animals with calmness. Their pulses throbbed and
their faces flushed. They were both on the qui vive.
“If it should be the buffaloes, Chet,” gasped Digby Fordham, “what’ll we
do?”
“Shake salt on their tails,” grinned Chet, “as you suggested doing to
the antelope.”
“No fooling,” Dig urged. “They’ll be dangerous, won’t they?”
“If we get them mad, I reckon they will be. But they are very timid at
the approach of man. And if they get started on the run—good-bye! We
couldn’t catch them unless our horses were very fresh. That’s why we
must take the trip over to their feeding ground easily. We may have to
gallop to get a shot.”
“If they are the buffaloes,” added the Doubting Thomas.
“If they are not the buffaloes, they’ll be something well worth
shooting,” Chet said with confidence. “I don’t know of anything else
that size that roams these plains.”
They had ridden several miles off the trail now, and the humped backs of
the grazing animals were quite plainly visible.
“Suppose they see us?” suggested Dig suddenly.
“From what I’ve heard about the buffaloes, there’s not much danger. You
see, they are headed away from us and are grazing. When their heads are
down they can’t see much going on right about them, and nothing at all
at a distance. A buffalo herd sets no sentinels as do elk or wild
horses.”
“But if they get a scent of us?”
“Wind’s from them. It’s blowing in our faces, isn’t it? Just the same,
we’ll creep up on them like a cat on a mouse,” Chet agreed. “After a
while, we’ll keep to the coulies and gullies, and go at a slower pace.
This is a great chance, Dig. If we each brought home a buffalo
robe—eh?”
“Whew!” breathed Dig exultantly.
“Or shot the big fellow they say captains this herd?” went on Chet.
“Oh, come on!” exclaimed Dig. “You make my mouth water.”
They had stopped for no midday meal; nor did Dig complain of this loss.
Not at present, at least. He was quite as much worked up over the hunt
as his chum.
“Just think of it,” Chet said, after a time, “I was reading a book the
other evening that quoted ‘Fremont, the Pathfinder’ as saying that in
1836 one travelling from the Rockies to the Missouri River never lost
sight of grazing buffaloes.”
“Whew!”
“The old emigrant trails were marked for years and years by the whitened
skulls of buffaloes, wantonly killed by the travellers. Everybody who
came West wanted to say that he had shot a buffalo. Why, Dig! they used
to roam all this great United States from the Pacific Slope to Lake
Champlain. The last buffalo was killed east of the Mississippi River in
1832.”
“And now it’s hard to find any of ’em,” said Dig. “Where have they
gone?”
“Indiscriminate killing,” replied Chet. “So the books say. Yet in 1859
some people estimated that there were more buffaloes grazing these
ranges than there were cattle in the whole country.
“Of course, the Indians slaughtered many of them. They were the only
beef the redmen had. The prairie Indians—the Comanches, Sioux and
Pawnees—just about lived on buffalo meat all the year around. And their
skins covered their winter teepees, clothed them in cold weather, and
otherwise were made useful. Their hoofs made glue and their tendons were
used by the squaws to sew with. Yes indeed! a buffalo was a mighty
useful animal to a redskin.”
“Well,” sighed Dig, “a buffalo is going to be a mighty useful animal to
you and me, Chet—if we shoot one. Why, say! there won’t be another
fellow in Silver Run who can show a buffalo head for a trophy.”
“Well,” Chet said, “if you propose to cart head and all back to town
you’ll have some contract, boy. I believe the head of a bull buffalo
will weigh almost as much as the rest of his body.”
“Whew!”
“That’s what makes of him such a good battering-ram. They say a blow
from the head of a two-months calf will knock a man over. Suppose Stone
Fence had been a buffalo calf. When he rammed you into that creek you’d
have been drowned.”
“Huh! That’s straining a point,” replied Dig. “You can bet I’m not going
to get in front of any of the creatures.”
“And that’s where you’ll be wise. Especially if you want to shoot one,”
Chet observed. “You might pump every ball in your rifle at the front of
an old bull, and he’d only shake his head and whisk his tail like a
horse bit by a fly. A bullet won’t bring down a bull, unless you are too
close for comfort. Behind the foreleg is the place to aim at.”
“Very well, Davy Crockett,” returned Dig. “I have taken your advice to
heart.”
Nevertheless, Digby admired his chum greatly because of Chet’s wider
reading and better memory for practical things. Of course, Chet had been
reading up on buffaloes ever since Rafe Peters and Tony Traddles
reported seeing the stray herd near the Grub Stake trail.
“Though I never expected that we’d sight them,” admitted Dig. “Whew!
Suppose we do bag one of them, old man?”
“That’s what we’re out here for,” his chum said. “Wait now till I spy
out the land again.”
He stood up in his stirrups and looked through the field-glasses. The
focus of the instrument brought the group of feeding buffaloes very
near. Chet counted them twice to make sure.
“Sixteen, Dig!” he said, under his breath. “My goodness, boy! Wait till
we get up to them.”
“Do you see the big fellow? Or was that a yarn of Tony’s? I wouldn’t
believe that fellow on a stack of Bibles as high as the moon.”
“Rafe saw the big bull, too. Goodness! there he is!”
“Where?” asked Dig, looking around, startled, as though expecting to see
the buffalo right at hand.
“He’s been feeding off by himself. He is coming from behind that clump
of shrubs. Look at the monster, Dig!”
He handed the glasses quickly to his chum. The latter focused them and
almost immediately uttered his favourite ejaculation:
“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! That’s an
elephant—not a buffalo, Chet.”
“Aren’t you glad you brought that heavy rifle, old man?”
“I wish it were a cannon,” admitted Dig, in amazement at the size of the
big buffalo.
He was grazing with his side toward the approaching hunters, and for
several minutes Chet and Dig both gazed upon him through the glasses.
His hump was enormous, and so shaggy that he looked as big as an
overland freight wagon, painted black.
Of course, close to, the buffalo would have been found to be brown—of
various shades. The mane is the darker—sometimes almost black, in fact.
The bull is much darker than the cow.
The great shoulders, neck and head, covered with thick, matted hair to
the eyes, make a threatening front for any unsophisticated hunter to
face. Dig admitted his distaste for the prospect.
“I’ll take your word for it, old man,” he said to his chum. “If I get a
shot you can bet it will be from the side. I don’t want that
battering-ram headed for me when I fire. I certainly should have what
old Rafe calls elk fever.”
“Stage fright, I reckon!” agreed his chum.
“But say!” Dig asked, “where are his horns? I don’t see any.”
“And you’ll not till you’re on top of him,” Chet replied. “The horns are
no bigger than a two year old steer’s. But he can bunt with ’em.”
“Aren’t you right! Whew! let’s be careful how we approach those
creatures.”
“We will be just that,” agreed Chet. “Now come on, boy; give me the
glasses. See that everything is all right; don’t let any of the tinware
joggle. Is your rifle all right? Button your revolver tight in the
holster. A six-shooter won’t do you anymore good than a pea-shooter with
those shaggy fellows. This old rifle of father’s is the boy to depend
on.”
“I’m ready,” said Dig, and they let the impatient horses go again.
They rode on sod, and that silenced the hoof-beats to a degree. When
they were all of two miles from the buffalo herd they pulled in and only
walked their mounts. And they did not see the buffaloes again for nearly
an hour, for they kept to the low places in the plain.
At last Chet left his horse in Dig’s care and reconnoitred by creeping
up the side of a coulie on hands and knees. When he saw the first
buffalo he ducked quickly, fearful that he had been seen. It was a young
bull, not more than half grown; but it looked larger than any horse Chet
had ever seen.
He could have made a clean shot at that animal; but Chet had not brought
his gun with him. He had not expected to find any of the herd so near.
Nor were there any others at this spot.
The remaining fifteen, including the big bison, were out of rifle-shot
from this point. And just as Chet spied the land out, the young bull
lifted his head, twirled his tail, and started off on an easy trot for
the rest of his tribe.
He had not been startled. It was merely that he had chanced to discover
he was alone and the sense of fear, more than any other sense, keeps all
of the bovine clans in herd. They are not naturally gregarious.
Chet peeped and peered after the trotting buffalo until he reached his
clan. The herd was not disturbed. All went on feeding peacefully. It
would have been too bad to shoot at that single bull and so startle the
entire herd.
But they were feeding a good ways out on the open and unbroken plain.
Chet scanned it carefully. There really did not seem to be a bit of
screen on this side behind which they might creep up on the buffaloes.
The gentle wind blew towards him. He knew better than to try to approach
the herd with the wind. But how meet the emergency?
Chet Havens was not a practical hunter; but he was theoretically a good
one, for he had a good memory and was a good shot. The mere ability to
shoot true is not the only quality necessary to make a good sportsman.
The boy realised his shortcomings.
He had never been placed in such a situation as this alone before.
Always he and Dig had had an experienced hunter with them when they
stalked deer. Here was a case where the boy had to decide what to do on
his own initiative.
His father and Mr. Fordham had praised his resourcefulness when he had
made the successful attempt to get at the men entombed in the Silent Sue
mine. This was another chance for him to prove that they had not been
mistaken in him.
Chet Havens glanced again at the peacefully feeding buffaloes, fully a
quarter of a mile away; then he looked down into the hollow where the
two horses grazed and Dig awaited him. An idea was born in the boy’s
mind.