AN EXPLORATION IX THE FAR EAST. 413 



spot carefully, as I thought, by a bush, and then rode 

 back full split for a heavy rifle. About a mile behind 

 I met B. with the rifles and dogs, and we proceeded 

 together to finish off" the cow. My large rifle had got 

 bulged in one barrel some time before, being unable to 

 bear the proper charges for bufl"alo- shooting, so I had 

 only one barrel to depend on. We walked up through 

 the grass close to the spot I had marked, but she 

 was not there. I soon lost the bearings, there being 

 fifty bushes just like the one I had marked her by, 

 and we wandered about, a little apart, looking for her. 

 I had stood up on an ant-hill to get a better look, when 

 just below me up started her savage-looking head and 

 long horns, and she plunged towards me in the grass. 

 A ball from the heavy rifle in the neck turned her, and 

 she passed between B. and me, preventing both of us 

 from further firing. The dogs now tackled her, 

 " Tinker " in particular (whose deeds of valour in the 

 wolf line have already been recorded) striving to seize 

 her by the nose as she tore along. A couple of hundred 

 yards further on she stopped in another patch of grass, 

 the dogs baying round her, and Tinker, exhausted 

 by the great heat, lying down in the shade of a bush, 

 but flying at her the moment she tried to move. We 

 marched up, at a short interval from each other, and, 

 arriving first on her blind side, I saw her glance at B., 

 shake ofi" the dogs, and creeping forward in a stealthy 

 manner like a tiger, watch for him, with horns laid back, 

 behind the screen of grass and bushes that intervened. 

 Before he arrived, however, I took a steady shot at her 

 neck with the little double fourteen-gauge rifle, dropping 

 her stone dead. We found she had an old bullet wound 

 in the flank, which was full of maggots, accounting for 

 her extremely poor condition and unusual savageness. 



