“So as to ride round and round the waggon in a circle. Father will bring one or two of them down.”
For answer Jack wheeled to the right, and if the manoeuvre had been kept up it would have answered; but, as it happened, Mr Rogers had gone away from the waggon in search of some beautifully plumaged birds which had settled in the trees above the camp, and then gone on to a grove a mile or so away.
The General and his boys were of course far away out on the plain, where they had been driving the buffalo, and therefore Dinny was the principal man in camp.
He was busy with the frying-pan frizzling himself a venison steak, when, hearing the thunder of hoofs, he dropped the pan in the wood ashes, and stood staring with horror.
“What’ll I do now?” he cried.
Then a bright idea seized him, and pulling his knife from his belt, he dashed at the place where his enemies the dogs were tied up by stout thongs to the waggon-wheels, and divided them one by one.
“There, ye bastes,” he cried, “be off and get tossed.” And as the dogs rushed off, delighted with their freedom, Dinny chose what he thought was the safest place in the camp, namely, the space between the four wheels beneath the waggon, and there lay down and wished himself back safely in his mother’s cabin.
The dogs had been for some moments past tearing at their thongs to get away, so that no sooner were they freed than, barking and baying fiercely, they raced down after the buffaloes, and Dinny never did a better act in his life. Certainly it was prompted by cowardice; but it had its good fruits, for it was the saving of poor Dick’s life.
The boys had galloped on as had been suggested, gradually inclining to the right, so that they drew the little herd of bulls into following them in a circle; and in this way they had nearly gone round the waggon at about a couple of hundred yards’ distance, wondering why their father did not shoot, when, all at once, just as the baying of the dogs reached their ears, Dick turned a piteous look at his brother.
“I’m—I’m not strong, yet, Jack,” he faltered. “Ride on fast.”