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We found nothing on that day. Chuck told me, as we turned back toward the caravan that evening, that we should find hunting the prairies a very different matter from hunting through the hills, where there was life among the trees everywhere and along the streams. Coming back we crossed fully five miles over which the grass was trampled and eaten low. The ground bore myriad marks of hoofs, as though all the cattle in the world had come this way and been pooled here, milling and stamping. And we found one skeleton, of which even the bones had been torn apart.

“A buffalo herd,” said Chuck.

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Are there this many buffalo in the world?”

“This is only a small herd. I’ve seen the prairie black with them as far as your eye could stretch. This crowd passed along here some time ago.”

We reached camp and found it a gloomy place. The men were silent and all busy with the preparation of supper. When we reported that we had no game for them, they answered not a word - as though they expected no good news to come out of this land sea.

Chuck and I ate our meal hastily and then walked out to get away from that atmosphere of dread and sorrow. Before we had gone a quarter of a mile from the wagons, Chuck told me that this dismal cloud would disappear from the caravan after a day or two, and that they would all be as merry as ever. At first the prairies always made men homesick - except the few men who were born to love the prairie. He did not have to tell me that he and I were among the exceptions. He had hardly finished telling me this when he suddenly dropped flat on his face and swept me down beside him.

“Straight ahead,” he whispered to me.

I looked through the grass, as he had told me to do. Up to the top of a little hummock, just before us, rode a half-naked Indian and halted there. There was a steady south wind that blew the feathers in his hair to the side. I remember wondering at his long, smooth, naked arms. He carried a rifle, and he was staring down toward the caravan. We were so close that we could see the stir of his chest as he breathed. Then he backed his horse out of sight and disappeared, and after a moment we heard a feeble drumming of hoofs.

Chuck sat up. “We’ll get back to camp,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “We’ve nothing to fear from the Indians. We’ve done them no harm.”

“I don’t like the looks of that fellow. He ought to have ridden straight into the camp and asked for something to eat and for a gift or two. That’s what he would have done, probably, if he had been friendly. I don’t like it at all. As for never having harmed them, that doesn’t matter. The wrong that one white man does them, they lay up against all white men.”

When we reached camp, he went straight to Gregory and reported what he had seen. Gregory was playing cards and drinking a good deal more than was good for him. He looked at Chuck Morris with a flushed, reckless face and told him he was a young fool to make a ruction about one Indian.

So Chuck backed out. “The worst of it is,” he said, “that we have a drunken fool at the head of this party. I don’t like it. I’ve half a mind to break away and cut back by myself.”

He talked a good deal more in this strain. That night, as we lay awake murmuring to one another after the rest were asleep, he sent my blood cold by saying: “There’s no watch tonight. Have you noticed?”

Just at that moment, by an inspired accident, a long, smooth howling began far away in the night, a devilish noise that stopped my breath like a leap into icy water.

“What do you suppose it is?” I breathed.

He chuckled a little as he answered: “It’s not Indians, tenderfoot. It’s buffalo wolves. You saw that skeleton today? That’s where they nipped off a straggler from the big herd.”

I hardly more than dozed that night, expecting every moment to hear the screeching of Indians as they rushed for the attack, the beating of hoofs, and the roar of guns. But that attack did not come.

The next day Morris and I compared notes on the ridiculous carelessness with which this caravan was heading through the prairie. But the days went by, and nothing happened. There was no sign of Indians. Ten days - and still no Indians. But there was also no fresh meat.

Gregory called us in to him and said: “Fresh meat tomorrow, boys, or the next day you can drive horses, and somebody else will take up the job.”

There was no use arguing. He was half drunk, as usual, and very angry. Chuck and I knew perfectly well that we were the best hunters in the crowd, with the possible exception of Chris Hudson, and we were not sure of that. We decided that we would range farther than ever in quest of game the next day, so we were up in the cool of the dawn and started away. We ranged all morning, riding recklessly far and straight out from the caravan, but we found no sign of game. Finally we reached a low hump of ground - what passed for a real hill on the prairie - and from that vantage point we searched the horizon.

“There’s not a thing,” I said.

“What’s yonder?” asked Chuck, stiffening his arm to point.

“The sun flashing on some rocks, I suppose.”

“Antelope,” said Chuck. “Damned if it ain’t antelope. Now, if we have a little luck, we’ll give them meat tonight.”

We had luck in the very beginning, at the least, for the wind was a steady breeze, cutting straight from the antelope to us. We rode like mad straight ahead for a time. Then, in a low, shallow swale, we left the horses, which were trained to stand when the reins were thrown over their heads, like the cow ponies of the present-day ranchmen. We sneaked over the next high place, wriggling along on our stomachs and pushing the rifles ahead of us. There we saw the antelope just before us. They were not by any means in point-blank range, but we dared not risk frightening the whole herd away by climbing farther over the ridge. Even as it was we nearly lost them.

While we lay there, one of the big ones, on the farther swell of ground, suddenly tossed up his head, and his whole rump turned white with a flash like a tin pan. It was a very astonishing thing to see - as though someone had touched a match to him - except that fire would never have been so brilliant. After that, which seemed to be a signal, the heads of the others went up, and their rumps flashed white - a wave which in an instant had passed through the entire herd. Then they began to run. I mean that they turned themselves into dark streaks slashed with white. I had never seen anything so lovely as those dainty-limbed creatures. When they started away, I thought, for an instant, they had taken wing.

I had occasion afterward to find out that their running is not so miraculously fast. But it is fast enough, considering that a one hundred-pound antelope can run almost as swiftly as a blooded race horse. Nothing else on the prairie can rival them - not even a jack rabbit, which is almost too fast for belief. At any rate, fast as they ran, Morris and I got in a shot apiece, and each of us dropped a buck. They were fat ones. Mine weighed one hundred pounds, by my guess. Chuck’s must have been close to one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty. As usual, he was childishly glad because he had brought down the better game. He was singing and whistling all the time he was cleaning his kill.

We were both in such spirits, now, that we decided to tie the bodies on the horses and lead the animals for a few miles, so that we could rest them a little, rather than give them an extra burden at the very beginning of their return trip. Although we were extremely anxious to reach the caravan before night, so that they would have the meat for the evening meal, we jogged on for five or six miles in this fashion, leading the horses, then we mounted and rode. I remember asking Chuck about the flash signal of the antelope, and he pointed out to me two white disks on either side of the tail of the antelope. The hair is long on the outside of the disk - perhaps four inches. It is short in the center, and all that hair can be turned out, so that the spot is greatly increased in size, and the flat-lying white hair catches the sunlight just like a mirror does.