Their flight seems to have been an alternation of mad rides and of skulking hides. We find them, according to their own accounts, putting in the day lying quiet or seeking their way over the roadless plains where they were certain to encounter no one, and during the night riding madly forward towards the eastern horizon, where was the only ray of hope, small as it was, that shone for them.
The fifth day out they ran into a large herd of buffalo, while riding over the prairie. They decided to relieve the tedium that surrounded their almost blank existence by having a little sport with the bison and at the same time capture some fresh meat. They shot into the herd, taking aim at a particularly large old bull, and wounding him so badly that when the others of his herd ran off he was unable to keep pace with them and was left behind. Wight and Witherill put spurs to their horses, rushing across the open plain with the speed of the wind and firing at the wounded and faltering animal as they went, very much, indeed, as they had pursued poor Wall when they sought to take his life as they now sought to take that of the crippled bison who ran before them. He at first seemed destined to evade them, as their human victim had done, but, like Wall, had at last faltered and so slowed up as to permit himself to be overtaken.
In their impetuosity, they had rushed upon the animal until they could almost touch him with the muzzles of their fire arms. Wight had reigned his horse up by the side of the animal, which had come to bay, and was preparing to shoot, when Witherill came up behind and landed a bullet from his weapon in the back of the bull. The animal roared with pain, and snorting and shooting fire out of his eyes, made a desperate plunge at the horse and rider by his side. Wight pulled up his horse hastily, but not soon enough to avoid the blow. The bison's horn struck him on the shin and, short and dull-pointed as it was, cut its way to the bone, ripping open the flesh of the calf of the leg all the way to the knee, and tearing the sinews out, making a very ugly and painful wound. The blood spurted out so as to almost blind the brute, which did not, however, cease its attack. Wight managed to spur up his horse, the animal having been protected from the bull's horn by its rider's leg, and he and his "brave" partner, although they had had courage enough to shoot down a defenseless man, found themselves unable to stand before this specimen of brutal anger and rode off as rapidly as they could, leaving the field to the wounded buffalo.