THE BUFFALO. 



293 



The black one walked in front, while the old moss-back, 

 whose wrinkled hide had apparently shed the snows of 

 sixty winters, and whose races with the i)onies of many a 

 Pawnee and Ogalalla, long since dead, had stiffened his 

 rheumatic old joints, crei)t wearily after him, as though in 

 search of a good place to lie down and die. 



Near the head of the ravine they stopped; and for an 

 hour I waited for the old skeleton to walk on and give me 

 a shot at the other, which stood just beyond him, and at 

 which I could not shoot without exposing myself, which I 

 dreaded to do with the wretched gun I carried. Finally I 

 grew weary of waiting, and determined to start him. Ris- 

 ing up, I judged the distance at one hundred yards (it 

 afterward proved to be about fifty), and fired. 



Tom Hood, describing the sudden release of boys from 

 the school-room, says: 



" There were some that ran and some that leapt, 

 Like troutlets in a pool! " 



Not a boy of all the class, however, could have skipped 

 with this suddenly rejuvenated old Buffalo. The man who 

 would "caper with him for a thousand mark " would be 

 badly left, indeed. He seemed to rise up on his hind feet 

 and pirouette with the agility of a Fanny EUsler, while he 

 looked hungrily around for the man who had trod on the 

 tail of his coat; and had an observer been convenient, a 

 solitary horseman might have been seen, on foot, with hair 

 uprising and an old Gallagher in his hand, as he sped down 

 the ravine, looking eagerly for a chance to crawl into a 

 prairie-dog hole or climb up among the top limbs of a sage- 

 bush. The Buffalo had evidently been hit up in the hump, 

 with the result of making him "fightin' mad." 



When my heart had gone down in my body, and I was 

 enabled to draw air into my lungs again, I found that they 

 had both run on and joined the herd on the divide; and on 

 trying to crawl within gunshot once more, some straggler 

 caught sight of me and gave the alarm, when tlie whole 

 herd run southward out of sight. The firing, and the j)auic 



