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Show 424 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. abstraction, as if reflecting on his puerile conduct. 'You are too ugly to live,' thought I; and aiming at the ugliest, I shot three of them in succession. The rest were not at all discom. posed at this ; they kept on bellowing and butting and rolling on the ground as before. f-Ienry Chattillon always cautioned us to keep perfectly quiet in the presence of a wounded buffalo for any movement is apt to excite him to make an attack; so I' sat still upon the ground, loading and firing with as little motion as possible. vVhile I was thus employed, a spectator made his appearance : a little antelope came running up with remarkable gentleness to within fifty yards; and there it stood, its slender neck arched, its small horns thrown back, and its large dark eyes gazing on me with a look of eager curiosity. By the side of the shaggy and brutish monsters before me, it seemed like some lovely young girl wandering near a den of robbers or a nest of bearded pirates. The buffalo looked uglier than ever. 'Here goes for another of you,' thought I, feeling in my pouch for a percussion-cap. Not a percussion-cap was there. My good rifle was useless as an old iron bar. One of the wounded hulls had not yet fallen, and I waited for some time, hoping every moment that his strength would fail him. He still stood firm, looking grimly at me, and disregarding I-Ienry's advice, I rose and walked away. Many of the bulls turned and looked at me, but the wounded brute made no attack. I soon came upon a deep ravine which would give me shelter in case of emergency; so I turned round and threw a stone at the bulls. They received it with the utmost indifference. Feeling myself insulted at their refusal to be frightened, I swung my hat, shouted, and made a show of running toward them; at this they crowded together and galloped off, leaving their dead and ~------ DOWN THE ARKANSAS. 425 wounded upon the field. As I moved towards the camp I saw the last survivor totter and fall dead. My speed in returning was wonderfully quickened by the reflection that the Pawnees were abroad, and that I was defenceless in case of meeting with an enemy. I saw no living thing, however, except two or three squalid old bulls scrambling among the sand-hills that flanked the great ravine. When I reached camp the party were nearly ready for the afternDon move. We encamped that evening at a short distance from the river bank. About midnjght, as we all lay asleep on the ground, the man nearest to me, gently reaching out his hand, touched my shoulder, and cautioned me at the same time not to move. It was bright starlight. Opening my eyes and slightly • turning, I saw a large white wolf moving stealthily around the embers of our fire ' with his nose close to the ground. Disen- . gaging my hand from the blanket, I drew the cover from my rifle, which lay close at my side ; the motion alarmed the wolf, and with long leaps he bounded out of the camp. Jumping up, I fired after him, when he was about thirty yards distant; the melancholy hum of the bullet sounded far away through the night. At the sharp report, so suddenly breaking upon·the stillness, all the men sprang up. ' You've killed him,' said one of them. 'No I haven't,' said I; 'there he goes, running along the river.' 'Then there's two of them. Don't you see that one lying out yonder ?' We went out to it, and instead of a dead white wolf, found the bleached skull of a buffalo. I had missed my mark, and what was worse, had grossly violated a stan dm. g 1a w 0 f the |