No One Was More Relieved Than Delorier By The Departure Of The
Volunteers; For Dinner Was Getting Colder Every Moment.
He spread a
well-whitened buffalo hide upon the grass, placed in the middle the
juicy hump of a fat cow, ranged around it the tin plates and cups,
and then acquainted us that all was ready.
Tete Rouge, with his
usual alacrity on such occasions, was the first to take his seat. In
his former capacity of steamboat clerk, he had learned to prefix the
honorary MISTER to everybody's name, whether of high or low degree;
so Jim Gurney was Mr. Gurney, Henry was Mr. Henry, and even Delorier,
for the first time in his life, heard himself addressed as Mr.
Delorier. This did not prevent his conceiving a violent enmity
against Tete Rouge, who, in his futile though praiseworthy attempts
to make himself useful used always to intermeddle with cooking the
dinners. Delorier's disposition knew no medium between smiles and
sunshine and a downright tornado of wrath; he said nothing to Tete
Rouge, but his wrongs rankled in his breast. Tete Rouge had taken
his place at dinner; it was his happiest moment; he sat enveloped in
the old buffalo coat, sleeves turned up in preparation for the work,
and his short legs crossed on the grass before him; he had a cup of
coffee by his side and his knife ready in his hand and while he
looked upon the fat hump ribs, his eyes dilated with anticipation.
Delorier sat just opposite to him, and the rest of us by this time
had taken our seats.
"How is this, Delorier? You haven't given us bread enough."
At this Delorier's placid face flew instantly into a paroxysm of
contortions. He grinned with wrath, chattered, gesticulated, and
hurled forth a volley of incoherent words in broken English at the
astonished Tete Rouge. It was just possible to make out that he was
accusing him of having stolen and eaten four large cakes which had
been laid by for dinner. Tete Rouge, utterly confounded at this
sudden attack, stared at Delorier for a moment in dumb amazement,
with mouth and eyes wide open. At last he found speech, and
protested that the accusation was false; and that he could not
conceive how he had offended Mr. Delorier, or provoked him to use
such ungentlemanly expressions. The tempest of words raged with such
fury that nothing else could be heard. But Tete Rouge, from his
greater command of English, had a manifest advantage over Delorier,
who after sputtering and grimacing for a while, found his words quite
inadequate to the expression of his wrath. He jumped up and
vanished, jerking out between his teeth one furious sacre enfant de
grace, a Canadian title of honor, made doubly emphatic by being
usually applied together with a cut of the whip to refractory mules
and horses.
The next morning we saw an old buffalo escorting his cow with two
small calves over the prairie. Close behind came four or five large
white wolves, sneaking stealthily through the long meadow-grass, and
watching for the moment when one of the children should chance to lag
behind his parents. The old bull kept well on his guard, and faced
about now and then to keep the prowling ruffians at a distance.
As we approached our nooning place, we saw five or six buffalo
standing at the very summit of a tall bluff. Trotting forward to the
spot where we meant to stop, I flung off my saddle and turned my
horse loose. By making a circuit under cover of some rising ground,
I reached the foot of the bluff unnoticed, and climbed up its steep
side. Lying under the brow of the declivity, I prepared to fire at
the buffalo, who stood on the flat surface about not five yards
distant. Perhaps I was too hasty, for the gleaming rifle-barrel
leveled over the edge caught their notice; they turned and ran.
Close as they were, it was impossible to kill them when in that
position, and stepping upon the summit I pursued them over the high
arid tableland. It was extremely rugged and broken; a great sandy
ravine was channeled through it, with smaller ravines entering on
each side like tributary streams. The buffalo scattered, and I soon
lost sight of most of them as they scuttled away through the sandy
chasms; a bull and a cow alone kept in view. For a while they ran
along the edge of the great ravine, appearing and disappearing as
they dived into some chasm and again emerged from it. At last they
stretched out upon the broad prairie, a plain nearly flat and almost
devoid of verdure, for every short grass-blade was dried and
shriveled by the glaring sun. Now and then the old bull would face
toward me; whenever he did so I fell to the ground and lay
motionless. In this manner I chased them for about two miles, until
at length I heard in front a deep hoarse bellowing. A moment after a
band of about a hundred bulls, before hidden by a slight swell of the
plain, came at once into view. The fugitives ran toward them.
Instead of mingling with the band, as I expected, they passed
directly through, and continued their flight. At this I gave up the
chase, and kneeling down, crawled to within gunshot of the bulls, and
with panting breath and trickling brow sat down on the ground to
watch them; my presence did not disturb them in the least. They were
not feeding, for, indeed, there was nothing to eat; but they seemed
to have chosen the parched and scorching desert as the scene of their
amusements. Some were rolling on the ground amid a cloud of dust;
others, with a hoarse rumbling bellow, were butting their large heads
together, while many stood motionless, as if quite inanimate. Except
their monstrous growth of tangled grizzly mane, they had no hair; for
their old coat had fallen off in the spring, and their new one had
not as yet appeared.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 120 of 128
Words from 120989 to 122012
of 129303
