294 THESLAND OF) THEFEION 
for boys. They were sound, healthy books too, though no 
one reads them now; and I had always dreamed that some 
day, somehow, I with my own eyes might see those glorious 
plains and mountains and the painted wild men who rode | 
over them brave and free. Here at last was the dear dream 
coming true. Here was real prairie. With and behind me © 
rode two hundred and fifty naked Indians, stripped to the | 
breech clout and armed for hunting or for war; and beyond © 
us, shaggy and dangerous looking as the morning vapours © 
magnified their great bulk, stood countless herds of buffalo. 
The most distant were quietly feeding, having as yet seen 
nothing of the long line of cantering ponies. ‘Those nearer 
were stamping the ground as though, with mingled angerand © 
dismay, they resented man’s inroad into the rich fair land 
that was all their own. 
We had left the teepee camp, cunningly hidden in a fold 
of the great plain, at earliest light, and as all the warriors _ 
streamed out a crescent line was formed. In the centre | 
rode the war chief of the Crees, he alone carrying a spear, and 
wearing an eagle war bonnet; on one side of him rode my | 
boyhood’s friend (to whose kindness I owed the journey that © 
took us for more than six months into the wild), and I was © 
on the other. Now the swift, smooth canter quickened, the 
graceful swaying line of copper colour bent and bulged, as — 
each naked rider pressed his war pony on. The chief put 
his hand to his mouth and gave his signal yell, and every 
one went at the charge. 
The dust rose in clouds, here and there a rider went down 
as his pony stumbled and crashed to earth in a badger hole. | 
Our hunter, one of the most skilful buffalo killers in the 
Hudson Bay Company, riding to my right, was hurled to the 
earth, rolled over and over and lay still. The following | 
women and boys would pick up the fallen; the wave of horse- _ 
men rode over them and on. ‘There was no stopping now— 
you had to ride whether you would or no. 
