Victor held the glass to his eyes for several minutes, while the others waited for him to speak.
“It looks like a body of water,” he finally said, without lowering the instrument, “but, if it is, it’s coming this way!”
It was the Blackfoot who grinned and uttered the single word:
“Buffaloes!”
“So they are! You might have known that, George.”
“You didn’t know it till Mul-tal-la told you.”
Very soon the animals were identified by the naked eye. Numbers had been seen before, but never so large a herd as that upon which all now gazed with rapt attention. There must have been tens of thousands, all coming with that heavy, plunging pace peculiar to those animals. Sometimes an immense drove would be quietly cropping the herbage, when a slight flurry would set several in motion. Then the excitement ran through the whole lot with almost electric suddenness, and all were soon plunging in headlong flight across the plain.
The buffalo, or more properly the American bison, is a stupid creature and subject to the most senseless panics. Thousands have been known to dash at the highest speed straight away. Sometimes the leaders would come abruptly to the top of a lofty bluff, perhaps overlooking a stream deep below. In vain they attempted to hold back or to swerve to one side. The prodigious pressure from the rear was resistless, and they were driven over the cliff into the water, with the others piling upon them, and those again borne under by the remainder of the herd until hundreds were trampled, smothered and drowned in the muddy water beneath. Only those at the extreme rear were able to save themselves, and that not through any wit of their own.
As the seething host bore down upon the horsemen it was seen that the front, which was spread out over an expanse of several hundred yards, was coming straight for the elevation upon which our friends were waiting and watching them. Bellowing mingled with the thunderous tread of the mighty mass, and the sight was enough to awe the stoutest heart.
“They will trample us to death,” called the scared Victor, looking at Deerfoot, who was calmly contemplating the approaching army. The horses raised their heads, looked toward the brown, undulating mass, snuffed, snorted and trembled with terror, for their instinct told them that the peril was bearing down upon them with hurricane swiftness.