"I didn't do it, Ann. I don't shoot no man in the dark," replied our hostler guide, with a sullen defiance, which among that class stands equally well for innocence or guilt. We looked at the two, as they sat for an instant facing each other. The picture was a weird one--a wildcat, fronting the object of its chase, but undecided whether to spring or not. We felt that the dark maniac had been hovering around us, and that this meeting was not altogether accidental. Her disordered brain was yet undecided in which direction vengeance lay, and, like a tigress, she was watching and waiting.
Our policy developed, on the instant, into a non-committal and a safe one. As she wheeled her horse, and left us without a word, we remarked to our guide that crazy folks were often suspicious of their best friends.
"That's so," he replied, and rode off to urge on the wagons. We shrank from the idea of living with a murderer, and acquitted him of the crime on the spot.
We are moving out over the grand, illimitable plain again. Reader, ride with us awhile by the side of that big bison bull, which we have just stirred up from his noonday dream. You see his broad nostrils, reddish just under the dark skin at the end, and sensitive as the nose of a pointer. They have caught the air which we tainted, while passing for a moment across the breeze.
_BUREAU OF ILLUSTRATION. BUFFALO. N. Y._]
He has seen nothing, and we are still invisible, but he does not stop to look behind. "Escape for your life!" has been as plainly telegraphed from nose to brain, as it could be by eyes or mouth. We were so far off and well hidden then, that those active tell-tales, sound and sight, could play no part in this alarm. But the sentinel nerves of smell fled back from their post on the frontier, with the cry of "Man!" and the beast of the wilderness thinks only of flight. Powerful for defense against the rest of the animal creation, he is coward on the instant before its king.
Away he goes, right into the teeth of the wind, which he knows will tell him of any other foes ahead. Lumber along, old fellow, in your ponderous gallop,--the reader and I are on your path. Our saddle girths have been tightly drawn, the holster pistols are nestled snug at hand, in their cases on either side of the saddle-horn, while across its front lies the light Henry carbine, with a shoulder-strap attaching it to our person, should we drop the gun for the pistol. Thus we ride with twenty-four shots before reloading, at the service of our trigger-finger; the carbine carries twelve, the pistols each a half-dozen.
