"Yes," Said Henry; "Let Us Go." He Descended Into The Ravine, Loaded
The Rifles, And Mounted His Horse.
We rode up the hill after the buffalo.
The herd was out of sight
when we reached the top, but lying on the grass not far off, was one
quite lifeless, and another violently struggling in the death agony.
"You see I miss him!" remarked Henry. He had fired from a distance
of more than a hundred and fifty yards, and both balls had passed
through the lungs - the true mark in shooting buffalo.
The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying our
horses to the horns of the victims, Henry began the bloody work of
dissection, slashing away with the science of a connoisseur, while I
vainly endeavored to imitate him. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror
and indignation when I endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of
raw hide, always carried for this purpose, dangling at the back of
the saddle. After some difficulty we overcame his scruples; and
heavily burdened with the more eligible portions of the buffalo, we
set out on our return. Scarcely had we emerged from the labyrinth of
gorges and ravines, and issued upon the open prairie, when the
pricking sleet came driving, gust upon gust, directly in our faces.
It was strangely dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The
freezing storm soon penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of
our heavy-gaited horses kept us warm enough, as we forced them
unwillingly in the teeth of the sleet and rain, by the powerful
suasion of our Indian whips. The prairie in this place was hard and
level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs had burrowed into it in
every direction, and the little mounds of fresh earth around their
holes were about as numerous as the hills in a cornfield; but not a
yelp was to be heard; not the nose of a single citizen was visible;
all had retired to the depths of their burrows, and we envied them
their dry and comfortable habitations. An hour's hard riding showed
us our tent dimly looming through the storm, one side puffed out by
the force of the wind, and the other collapsed in proportion, while
the disconsolate horses stood shivering close around, and the wind
kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of three old half-dead trees
above. Shaw, like a patriarch, sat on his saddle in the entrance,
with a pipe in his mouth, and his arms folded, contemplating, with
cool satisfaction, the piles of meat that we flung on the ground
before him. A dark and dreary night succeeded; but the sun rose with
heat so sultry and languid that the captain excused himself on that
account from waylaying an old buffalo bull, who with stupid gravity
was walking over the prairie to drink at the river. So much for the
climate of the Platte!
But it was not the weather alone that had produced this sudden
abatement of the sportsmanlike zeal which the captain had always
professed.
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