George looked over his shoulders and saw the scout lying close by on his blanket. He had come up to the fire and arranged his bed without attracting the attention of any one.
"Do you think there is nobody in this party who knows anything except yourself?" demanded George.
"Well, no; judgin' by the way you sling your chin, you know it all," replied the scout.
"What do you suppose first put this herd in motion?" asked one of the troopers, who had not yet gained all the information he wanted.
"That's a question that nobody can answer unless he was on the ground and saw them start," answered George.—"You'll not dispute that, will you, Mose?—Our Texas cattle will often get stampeded by the sight of a little cloud of dust that is suddenly raised by the wind; or some night a careless herdsman may step between them and the fire and throw his shadow upon them; or some of the young and foolish members of a drove will fall to skylarking, and that will frighten the others, and the first thing you know they are all off like the wind. Buffaloes have just as little sense. My herdsman has told me that he has seen hundreds of them, when they were suffering for water, walk into a stream that was literally choked with the bodies of their companions who had been caught in the quicksand."
"Say," growled a drowsy trooper from his blanket, "suppose you boys go somewhere and hire a hall?"
George laughed, and, taking the hint thus delicately thrown out, brought his lecture on buffaloes to a close. The remembrance of the thrilling scene through which he had just passed did not keep him awake. On the contrary, sleep came to his eyes almost immediately, and the last sound he heard as he was about to pass into the land of dreams was the subdued voice of the scout murmuring, "Fresh, very fresh!"