“What?” I asked. I saw at some distance ahead of us perhaps eighteen or twenty dark forms moving slowly.
“What!” repeated Sam, bouncing up and down in his saddle. “I’d be ashamed to ask such a question; you are indeed a precious greenhorn. Can’t you guess, my learned sir, what those things are before your eyes there?”
“I should take them for deer if I didn’t know there were none about here; and though those animals look so small from here, I should say they were larger than deer.”
“Deer in this locality! That’s a good one! But your other guess is not so bad; they certainly are larger than deer.”
“O Sam, they surely can’t be buffaloes?”
“They surely can. Bisons they are, genuine bisons beginning their travels, and the first I have seen. You see Mr. White was right: buffaloes and Indians. We saw only a footprint of the red men, but the buffaloes are there before our eyes in all their strength. What do you say about it?”
“We must go up to them.”
“Sure.”
“And study them.”
“Study them? Really study them?” he asked, glancing at me sidewise in surprise.