“Oh, I’ve done nothing; I came West to get experience. I hope to have a chance at other sport.”
“Well, I hope it will come more easily; yesterday your life hung by a hair. You risked too much. Never forget you’re a greenhorn tenderfoot. The idea of creeping up to shoot a buffalo in the eye! Did ever any one hear the like? But though hunting buffaloes is dangerous, bear-hunting is far more so.”
“Nonsense! The grizzly. You’ve read of him?”
“Well, be glad you don’t know him outside of books; and take care you don’t, for you might have a chance to meet him. He sometimes comes about such places as this, following the rivers even as far as the prairie. I’ll tell you more of him another time; here we are at the camp.”
“A mule, a mule! Where did you get her, Hawkins?” cried all the men.
“By special delivery from Washington, for a ten-cent stamp. Would you like to see the envelope?” asked Sam, dismounting.
Though they were curious, none asked further questions, for, like the beast he had captured, when Sam wouldn’t he wouldn’t, and that was the end of it.
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THE morning after Sam and I had caught Miss Nancy we moved our camp onward to begin labor on the next section of the road. Hawkins, Stone, and Parker did not help in this, for Sam was anxious to experiment further with Nancy’s education, and the other two accompanied him to the prairie, where they had sufficient room to carry out this purpose. We surveyors transferred our instruments ourselves, helped by one of Rattler’s men, while Rattler himself loafed around doing nothing.
We came to the spot where I had killed the two buffaloes, and to my surprise I saw that the body of the old bull was gone, leaving a broad trail of crushed grass that led to the adjoining thicket.
“I thought you had made sure both bulls were dead,” Rattler exclaimed. “The big one must have had some life in him.”
“Of course, unless you think a dead buffalo can take himself off.”
“Must he have taken himself off? Perhaps it was done for him.”
“Possibly Indians; we saw an Indian’s footprint over yonder.”
“You don’t say! How well a greenhorn can explain things!” sneered Rattler. “If it was done by Indians, where do you think they came from? Dropped from the skies? Because if they came from anywhere else we’d see their tracks. No, there was life in that buffalo, and he crawled into the thicket, where he must have died. I’m going to look for him.”