François, rash and impetuous, never dreamt of danger: Basil, courageous, did not fear it: Lucien had some misgivings, because he had heard or read more of it than the others. All, however, were curious to visit the strange, mound-looking eminence that rose out of the plain. This was quite natural. Even the rude savage and the matter-of-fact trapper often diverge from their course, impelled by a similar curiosity.
The horses were watered and saddled; Jeanette was packed; the water-gourds were filled; and our adventurers, having mounted, rode forward for the “butte.”
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Hunt of the Wild Horse.
“There must be buffalo in this neighbourhood,” said Basil, looking to the ground as they rode on. “These ‘chips’ are very fresh. They cannot have lain for many days. See! there is a buffalo-road covered with tracks!”
As Basil said this, he pointed to a trough-like hollow in the prairie, running as far as the eye could reach. It looked like the dry bed of a stream; but the hoof-tracks in the bottom showed that it was what he had called it,—a buffalo-road, leading, no doubt, to some river or watering-place. It was so deep that, in riding along it, the heads of our travellers were on a level with the prairie. It had been thus hollowed out by the water during heavy rains, as the soil, previously loosened by the hoofs of the buffaloes, was then carried off to the rivers. Such roads the buffaloes follow at times, thousands of them keeping in the same trail. They travel thus when they are migrating in search of better pastures, or water—to which they know by experience the roads will conduct them.
Our hunters did not follow this road far, as there was no certainty that it would bring them to where the animals then were. They crossed over, and kept on for the butte.
“Voilà!” cried François, “what are these?” François pointed to several circular hollows that appeared in the prairie before them.