“Listen!” replied Lucien; “do you hear that?”
All three had drawn bridle. A loud “gobble—obble—obble,” proceeded from the animals, evidently uttered by some one of the three.
“As I live,” exclaimed François, “that’s the gobble of an old turkey-cock!”
“Neither more nor less,” replied Lucien, with a smile. “They are turkeys!”
“Turkeys!” echoed Basil, “turkeys taken for buffaloes! What a grand deception!”
And all three at first looked very blank at each other, and then commenced laughing heartily at the mistake they had made.
“We must never tell of this,” said Basil, “we should be laughed at, I reckon.”
“Not a bit of it,” rejoined Lucien, “such mistakes are often made, even by old travellers on the prairies. It is an atmospheric illusion very common. I have heard of a worse case than ours—of a raven having been taken for a buffalo!”
“When we meet the buffaloes then, I suppose we shall mistake them for mammoths,” remarked François; and the disappointed hunters now turned their attention to the capturing of birds instead of buffaloes.