"What is this? What is this? What is this?" stuttered Alloway in his wrath.
"We seem, sir, to have been run over by a herd of buffaloes," said Wyatt, smoothly.
"And does this sort of thing happen often in these woods?"
"I can't say that I've heard of such a case before, but even if it's a single instance we're the victims of it."
Alloway glared at Wyatt, but he knew that he could not afford to quarrel with the young renegade, who had great influence with the tribes. He picked up the fragments of his red coat and looked at them ruefully.
"I didn't know that the herds were ever so large in this forest country," he said to Blackstaffe.
"It's seldom so," said the older renegade.
"Is it their habit to rise up at midnight and gallop over men's camps?"
"It is not."
"Then how do you account for such behavior?"