SYCE’S ADVENTURE 293 
tush in I cannot tell. He was, certainly twice, as Kipling 
would say, ‘“‘anxious.”” He turned to one side of his own 
spoor, went back on his track, lay by the trail we had to 
creep slowly and cautiously along, as we followed the blood 
sign, and when thus, all unconscious of his presence within 
a few feet of us, we came near to where he stood, he rushed 
off, not on to us. 
I had had poor luck in finding buffalo, or I should not 
have pressed after this one as I did in such an exceedingly 
dangerous place. If my bullets had not been changed he 
could not have gone a mile and IJ should have got him, or he 
might, under the circumstances, have got me. But of 
one thing I satisfied myself of on this and on another occa- 
sion, namely, that herds of buffalo will not charge over 
standing men. 
It had been a hard day, I was weary with continual 
crawling and stooping. And my easy chair by the camp 
fire was areal luxury. As I sat and looked long that night 
into the glowing embers of our thornwood fire, I seemed to 
see another herd in another land of very different buffalo, 
not at all like these fierce black denizens of the East African 
jungle, but a noble and useful beast that once in countless 
thousands roamed the broad prairies and mountain lands of 
our own far West. I saw again the buffalo of long ago, 
as I saw them on that first fresh, frosty September morning 
in 1868. 
“I speak of one, from many singled out, 
One of those blissful days that cannot die,” 
when before me stretched the boundless yellow prairie 
and behind me rose the run. ‘The sky was blue, as I think 
you see it only in our Autumn Indian Summer days. And 
the air! Well, I was only eighteen and it went to my head. 
Since I had been able to read anything, I had pored over 
Ballentine’s ‘‘Dog Crusoe”’ and other Western story books 
