MY FIVE BUFFALOES. 37 



evidently been attracted by the death call of the bull. 

 When she reached him she began routing at him with 

 her horns as he lay on the ground. I hastily inserted a 

 cartridge and gave her a heavy shot behind the shoulder, 

 which did not drop her though, for she went on as hard 

 as she could to the right, making a great rattle in the 

 bush as she did so. The smoke hung a bit, and I could 

 not get in a second barrel. I ran after her and shortly 



afterwards heard C 's rifle speak twice. On getting 



to the spot I found he had finished her off. He had 

 heard my firing and had run to the left in hopes of 

 getting a shot, and thus met her. 



I will here observe in parenthesis, that where there is 

 much shooting going on, the greatest danger of all 

 consists in the risk of coming unwarily upon some 

 buffalo that has been wounded by another hunter. In 

 following your own wounded buffalo you are on the qui 

 vive and can exercise due caution ; but no skill or know- 

 ledge of hunting can protect you from the risk of being, 

 when carelessly strolling along, with your rifle perhaps 

 under your arm at half cock, suddenly charged by a brute 

 that has been wounded by somebody else. More than 

 once this has occurred to me. We now sent our hunters 

 up the hill again to drive down the other troop which was 

 high up the hill side ; but this drive was a failure. I 

 suppose they had heard the sound of the firing, and for 

 that reason objected to coming down the gully. They 

 galloped along the face of the mountain and sidled 

 down into the plain far away to our right. 



My friend C , the prince of hunters, had been 



singularly unfortunate. I had bagged four buffaloes and 

 he had got no sport excepting in assisting me to finish 

 off a couple of my wounded ones, but he was a capital 



