240 The Wilderness Hunter. 



tion the men went in pursuit, excitement overcoming 

 their knowledge that they ought not, by rights, to leave 

 camp. They struck a steady trot, following the animals 

 by sight until they passed 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 trail. 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 unravel- 

 ling 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 grass- 

 land ; and but a few hundred yards from its 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- 



