294 THE LAND OF THE LION 



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 anger and 

 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. 



