I followed the guide and Seguin through the bushes; like them, riding slowly and silently.
In a few minutes we reached the edge of a prairie covered with long grass. Peering cautiously through the leaves of the prosopis, we had a full view of the open ground. The buffaloes were on the plain!
It was, as Rube had rightly conjectured, a small prairie about a mile and a half in width, closed in on all sides by a thick chapparal. Near the centre was a motte of heavy timber, growing up from a leafy underwood. A spur of willows running out from the timber indicated the presence of water.
“Thur’s a spring yander,” muttered Rube. “They’ve jest been a-coolin’ their noses at it.”
This was evident enough, for some of the animals were at the moment walking out of the willows; and we could see the wet clay glistening upon their flanks, and the saliva glancing down from their jaws.
“How will we get at them, Rube?” asked Seguin; “can we approach them, do you think?”
“I doubt not, cap. The grass ’ud hardly kiver us, an thur a-gwine out o’ range o’ the bushes.”
“How then? We cannot run them; there’s not room. They would be into the thicket at the first dash. We would lose every hoof of them.”
“Sartin as Scripter.”
“What is to be done?”