"I did. I could have filled all your wagons, alone and unaided."
"Did you see any bison?"
"Yes," replied Oscar, "I saw thousands of them, as I told you that night; but my guide was in so great a hurry to reach the shelter of the hills that I could not stop to secure a specimen. He was afraid of being snowed up. When I returned in the spring there were none to be seen. They had all gone south."
"Well, I and my party never saw one!" exclaimed the colonel angrily. "Those treacherous guides of ours kept us out on the open plain until we were overtaken by a buzzard——"
"Blizzard," corrected Oscar.
"Aw!" said the colonel, who seemed rather surprised at the interruption. "Well, whatever the right name is, we were almost frozen, and it was only after great difficulty and terrible suffering that we got back to the little collection of shanties at Julesburg, by courtesy called a fort. Then our guides coolly informed us that if we would come out there again, and leave what they were pleased to call our airs behind us, they would show us where we could kill more game than our horses could draw away. Did you ever hear of such impertinence? I'll never go back to that country, where every boor one meets considers himself the peer of any gentleman in the land. I am now going on a sporting excursion into the interior of Africa."
As the colonel said this he assumed an air of importance, and looked at Oscar to see what he thought about it.
It was plain, too, that he was talking for the benefit of a party of ladies—who had just then come up and taken their stand under the awning—all of whom turned and looked at the colonel as these words fell on their ears.
"There's just where I am going," said Oscar quietly.
"It is?" cried the colonel, elevating his eyebrows and allowing his eyeglass to fall out of its place. "What business have you got there? Why don't you stay in your own country?"