All at once the Bull Buffalo shook himself.
[II]
[WHAT THE BUFFALO CHIEF TOLD]
"Wake! Wake!" said the Bull Buffalo, with a roll to it, as though the word had been shouted in a deep voice down an empty barrel. He shook the dust out of his mane and stamped his fore-foot to set the herd in motion. There were thousands of them feeding as far as the eye could reach, across the prairie, yearlings and cows with their calves of that season, and here and there a bull, tossing his heavy head and sending up light puffs of dust under the pawings of his hoof as he took up the leader's signal.
"Wake! Wa--ake!"
It rolled along the ground like thunder. At the sound the herds gathered themselves from the prairie, they turned back from the licks, they rose upplopfrom the wallows, trotting singly in the trails that rayed out to every part of the pastures and led up toward the high ridges.
"Wa-ak--" began the old bull; then he stopped short, threw up his head, sniffing the wind, and ended with a sharp snort which changed the words to "What? What?"