Animated with their excellent success, they anticipated much more sport, inasmuch as neither themselves nor the hounds (which hitherto were not required to do farther service than to watch one of the deer while the men were engaged with the other) were in the slightest degree fatigued. The hours flew past unnoticed, while the young men proceeded gayly outward from the river in quest of new adventures.
Glenn and his man rode far beyond the scene of their late success without discovering any new object to gratify their undiminished zest for the chase. It seemed that the deer which had escaped had actually given intelligence to the rest of the arrival of a deadly foe in the vicinity, for not one could now be seen in riding several miles. The sun was sinking low and dim in the west, and Glenn was on the eve of turning homeward, when, on emerging from the flat prairie to a slight eminence that he had marked as boundary of his excursion, he beheld at no great distance an enormous mound, of pyramidical shape, which, from its isolated condition, he could not believe to be the formation of nature. Curious to inspect what he supposed to be a stupendous specimen of the remains of former generations of the aborigines, he resolved to protract his ride and ascend to the summit. The mound was some five hundred feet in diameter at the base, and terminated at a peak about one hundred and fifty feet in height. As our riders ascended, with some difficulty keeping in the saddle, they observed the earth on the sides to be mixed with flint-stones, and many of them apparently having once been cut in the shape of arrow-heads; and in several places where chasms had been formed by heavy showers, they remarked a great many pieces of bones, but so much broken and decayed they could not be certain that they were particles of human skeletons. When they reached the summit, which was not more than twenty feet in width and entirely barren, a magnificent scene burst in view. For ten or fifteen miles round on every side, the eye could discern oval, oblong, and circular groves of various dimensions, scattered over the rich virgin soil. The gentle undulations of the prairie resembled the boundless ocean entranced, as if the long swells had been suddenly abandoned by the wind, and yet remained stationary in their rolling attitude.
“What think you of the view, Joe?” inquired Glenn, after regarding the scene many minutes in silence.
“I’ve been watching a little speck, way out toward the, sun, which keeps bobbing up and down, and gets bigger and bigger,” said Joe.
“I mean the prospect around,” said Glenn. I can’t form an opinion, because I can’t see the end of it,” replied Joe, still intently regarding the object referred to.
“That is an animal of some kind,” observed Glenn, marking the object that attracted Joe.
“And a wapper, too; when I first saw it I thought it was a rabbit, and now it’s bigger than a deer, and still a mile or two off,” said Joe.
“We’ll wait a few minutes, and see what it is,” replied Glenn, checking his steed, which had proceeded a few steps downward. The object of their attention held its course directly towards them, and as it drew nearer it was easily distinguished to be a very large buffalo, an animal then somewhat rare so near the white man’s settlement, and one that our hero had often expressed a wish to see. Its dark shaggy sides, protuberant back and bushy head, were quite perceptible as it careered swiftly onward, seemingly flying from some danger behind.
“Down, Ringwood! Jowler!” exclaimed Glenn, preparing to fire.
“Down, Joe, too,” said Joe, slipping down from his pony, preferring not to risk another fall, and likewise preparing to fire.