Peter and I came to envy Tawannears his nakedness, and in the morning we stripped off our leathern shirts and rolled them in bundles to sling from the thongs of our food-pouches, suffering the Seneca to coat us with bear's-grease which he carried in a horn-box, a precaution which diminished notably the ardency of the sun's rays. Without its aid my unweathered shoulders must have been broiled pink, whereas under the layer of grease they baked gradually until in days to come they turned a warm brown not unlike the dusky bronze hue of Tawannears himself.
We had not pushed far this morning when we came upon a broad swath of trampled grass leading from south to north. Hoof-marks showed in the pulverized earth, and Peter's little eyes glistened.
"Buffalo!" he shrilled, excited as a boy. "Oof, now we get some nice hump for supper."
Eyes fixed on the horizon, he set off northward at a jog-trot, and Tawannears and I followed him, really as anxious as he to vary the monotony of our diet. Most of our burnt corn and maple-sugar was gone, and we had had scarcely anything but jerked deer-flesh for three days.
"How does he know the buffalo went north?" I questioned. "The trail leads in both directions."
"They always travel north at this season," rejoined Tawannears. "In the fall of the year they will turn south again. Yes, Peter is right. This grass was trampled only yesterday. They must be near us."
A yelp came from the Dutchman at that moment, and his enormous body crouched forward.
"See!" he cried.
We joined him on the summit of a slight rise. Several miles across the grassy sea moved a desultory procession of brown objects, hundreds of them.
"A large herd," I commented.