THE BULL TURNS UPON US. 257 



The brute stood facing us, perhaps fifty yards off, 

 his eyes rolling wildly from pain and fury, and the 

 blood flowing freely through his nostrils. 



We were waiting patiently for him to die, when 

 suddenly the head went into position, like a Roman 

 battering ram, and down he came upon us. We were 

 utterly routed. No spur was necessary to prompt 

 the horses, and I doubt if their former owners had 

 ever known what latent speed their hides concealed. 

 The whole thing was so sudden there was no time 

 for thought, and all that I can remember is a confused 

 sort of idea that each animal was going off at a tre- 

 mendous pace, with the rider devoting his energies 

 to sticking on. After the first few jumps, we were 

 no longer an organized company, each brute taking 

 his own course, and carrying us, like fragments of an 

 explosion, in different directions. A marked excep- 

 tion, however, was Muggs' mule, which for the only 

 time in his life, seemed unwilling to run away. Af- 

 ter being the first to start, and assisting the others to 

 stampede, he stopped suddenly short, depositing his 

 rider something like ten yards ahead of him, in a 

 manner quite the reverse of gentle. 



We did not stop running as soon as we might have 

 done. And I here enter protest against the nonsense 

 indulged in on one point by most of the novelists who 

 educate people in buffalo lore. When we halted, 

 there stood the bull not thirty yards from the spot 

 where he had first stopped, although we had located 

 him, throughout more than half a mile's ride but a 

 few feet from our horses' tails, and at times had even 

 imagined we heard his deep panting. This mortify- 



