A Buffalo Drive 



giving me a hard shot. It must have been the 

 last lot, who had been lying up, hoping and pray- 

 ing that some misguided being would pursue them 

 into their own stronghold. Their part of the 

 game is, on being hit, to disappear down one 

 of their paths — boggy underfoot, with a dense 

 mass of impenetrable reeds on each side — and 

 after a short distance to turn on their tracks for 

 some way parallel to their former path, and stand 

 motionless about three yards away from it, waiting 

 for the most cautious footsteps, and then have 

 a sudden dive at their pursuer. They are most 

 wonderful brutes for their sense of hearing, and 

 will stand without twitching an ear for hours 

 if they think they can play their little game, and 

 attack on ground of their own choosing. The 

 worst of the thing is that when they succeed 

 in getting their charge anything like home, their 

 heads being down and the tremendous horny 

 bosses protecting their brain and their wide sweep- 

 ing horns their chest, nearly all their vulnerable 

 parts are automatically armour-plated. A soft- 

 nosed bullet from a heavy cordite rifle will do 

 the trick in the right place, which is between the 

 bosses, and will kill the brute, or, if it misses the 

 brain, knocks him down with a bad head to boot 

 and turns him ; but their vitality will take them a 

 long way, and they are just as nasty after being 

 knocked down twice as at their first straight-away 

 charge. 



121 



