The next morning Dr. Whiting was quite a hero, and as the caravan left the creek he rode by the side of Patience, talking until he had thoroughly exhausted the subject. After he had left her to go helter-skeltering over the prairie a mile ahead in eager and hopeful search of buffalo, Hank Marshall rode up to the wagon and took his place.
He listened to Patience's excited comment about the doctor's narrow escape, and then, picking up the reins, twanged sharply, winked at her, and rode off to the flanking line. She stared after him for a moment and then stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth. When she had command over herself again she turned indignantly toward her chuckling uncle.
"Just the same, it was a mean trick!" she declared.
"Giddap," said Uncle Joe, and chuckled all the more.
"But it was!"
"It learned 'em all a lesson," he replied. "May save their fool lives, and ours, too. Giddap!"
It was a long haul to Turkey Creek, but the caravan made it and was corralled before dark. Buffalo signs had been seen shortly before the creek was reached, and when old Indian signs were found near the camp site, the day's excitement took on new life. A broken lodge-pole, some odds and ends of tanned hides and a discarded moccasin, somehow overlooked by the Indians' dogs, were discovered near the blackened spots on the prairie where camp-fires had burned. The night passed quietly, every sentry flat against the earth and trying to rob the senses of smell and touch to enrich those of sight and hearing.
In leaving the creek, the two column formation was abandoned and the wagons rolled up the little divide in four evenly spaced divisions. There was some semblance of flankers and a rear guard now, and even the cannons were not forsaken. Then came the great moment.
Two hours after the creek had been left the first herd of buffalo was sighted. That it was a small one and more likely to provide tough bull rather than fat cow, made no difference; rear guard, flankers, and cannon were forgotten in one mad, frantic, and ridiculous rush. Men dashed off toward the herd without even their pistols. In ten minutes a moderate sized war-party could have swept down on the caravan and had things nearly their own way. There would have been no buffalo meat in camp that night except that the experienced hunters with the advance guard managed to down two cows and three bulls before the yelling, excitement-maddened crowd stampeded the little herd and drove it all over the prairie.
One tenderfoot, better mounted than his fellows, managed to keep up with a running bull, firing ball after ball into it as fast as he could re-load. He was learning that a bull-buffalo was a hard animal to kill, and when it finally wheeled and charged him, he also learned that it was willing to fight when goaded and made desperate with wounds. Another greenhorn, to get better aim, dismounted and knelt on the earth. With the roar of his gun his horse, with all its trappings, gave one snort and ran away, joining the herd and running with it. It was an hour before anyone had time to listen to his entreaties, and then it was too late to go after the runaway animal. He hoofed it back to the caravan, an angry but wiser man, and was promptly robbed by the man from whom he bought a horse.