124 *4 Buffalo Hunt in Northern Mexico. 



Don Miguel in the lead. The startled herd, executing a volt to the 

 rear, stood a moment at bay. The king under the tree shook his 

 crowned head, and viewed us askance. Ha! ha! was he scared? 

 Or, like a veteran general, was he coolly counting the odds before 

 resolving on battle ? If, at a signal, his army had closed en masse 

 and charged us horns down, what a hurry-scurrying rearward there 

 would have been on our part! But no — he had heard the whoop of 

 assault before, and knew all its significance. The pause was from 

 curiosity, as natural to his kind as to a high-bred lady. We heard 

 his bellow, ragged as the mot of a Mexican trumpet ; then he went 

 right-about; whereat there was a general stampede — a blind sauve 

 qui pent, which, interpreted literally, means, may the devil take the 

 hindmost. Away they went, all alike, the king forgetful of his 

 dignity, and all the queens for once at least self-dependent. 



Now, if the reader will resolve a buffalo into a machine and make 

 study of his locomotive capacities, it will be seen he was not made 

 for speed. He is too weak in the hind-quarters, too ponderous in 

 the fore ; and as if the fatted hump on his shoulder were not a suffi- 

 cient handicap of the poor brute, Nature fashioned his head after the 

 model of a pork-barrel, and hung it so low as to be directly in the 

 way of his forefeet — the very reverse of a horse or a deer. A for- 

 tiori, as the lawyers are so fond of saying, he does not leap when in 

 flight, but rolls and plunges, like a porpoise at play. In short, there 

 would have been shame everlasting in the house of Zuloaga if our 

 mustangs, outfliers of the desert winds, had failed to overtake the 

 lumbering fugitives in less than a half mile. 



I do not know what my companions did — a quick concentrating 

 of self seized me, insomuch that I became to the world else the 

 merest husk of a purpose ; the circumstances of the charge, those 

 the eye catches and those the ear hears, looks, actions, words, yell ; 

 even the stirring rataplan of the horses' drumming hoofs and the 

 deep bass earth-rumble of the game in multitudinous flight — all 

 failed my perception ; for as we drew near the chase one straggler 

 claimed my attention — a heifer, clean built and clean of hide. She 

 was running freely, and could have made better speed but for the 

 slower hulks in her way. I had a thought that she might make 

 better meat than the bigger specimens, and yet another, she might 

 be more easily killed ; and to kill her I bent every faculty. 



