I can run as fast as most men, and upon that occasion I did my best. It would have put “Gildersleeve” into a white sweat to have distanced me; but I had not been two minutes at it, when I felt conscious that the buffalo gained upon me, and was almost treading upon my heels! I knew it only by my ears—I dared not spare time to look back.
At this moment, an object appeared before me, that promised, one way or another, to interrupt the chase; it was a ditch or gully, that intersected my path at right angles. It was several feet in depth, dry at the bottom, and with perpendicular sides.
I was almost upon its edge before I noticed it, but the moment it came under my eye, I saw that it offered the means of a temporary safety at least. If I could only leap this gully, I felt satisfied that the buffalo could not.
It was a sharp leap—at least, seventeen feet from cheek to cheek; but I had done more than that in my time; and, without halting in my gait, I ran forward to the edge, and sprang over.
I alighted cleverly upon the opposite bank, where I stopped, and turned round to watch my pursuer.
I now ascertained how near my end I had been: the bull was already up to the very edge of the gully. Had I not made my leap at the instant I did, I should have been by that time dancing upon his horns. He himself had balked at the leap; the deep chasm-like cleft had cowed him. He saw that he could not clear it; and now stood upon the opposite bank with head lowered, and spread nostrils, his tail lashing his brown flanks, while his glaring black eyes expressed the full measure of his baffled rage.
I remarked that my shot had taken effect in his shoulder, as the blood trickled from his long hair.
I had almost begun to congratulate myself on having escaped, when a hurried glance to the right, and another to the left, cut short my happiness. I saw that on both sides, at a distance of less than fifty paces, the gully shallowed out into the plain, where it ended; at either end it was, of course, passable.
The bull observed this almost at the same time as myself; and, suddenly turning away from the brink, he ran along the edge of the chasm, evidently with the intention of turning it.
In less than a minute’s time we were once more on the same side, and my situation appeared as terrible as ever; but, stepping back for a short run, I re-leaped the chasm, and again we stood on opposite sides.