While the friends were thus jogging onwards, the hunt came to an end, and the hunters, throwing off their coats and turning up their sleeves, drew their scalping-knives, and began the work of skinning and cutting up the animals. While thus engaged their guns and bridles lay handy beside them, for at such times their Indian enemies are apt to pounce on and scalp some of them, should they chance to be in the neighbourhood. At the same time the carts advanced and began to load with meat and marrow-bones. The utmost expedition was used, for all the meat that they should be obliged to leave on the field when night closed in would be lost to them and become the property of the wolves. We know not what the loss amounted to on this occasion. But the gain was eminently satisfactory, no fewer than 1375 tongues, (as tit-bits and trophies), being brought into camp.
Is it to be wondered at that there were sounds of rejoicing that night round the blazing camp-fires? Need we remark that the hissing of juicy steaks sounded like a sweet lullaby far on into the night; that the contents of marrow-bones oiled the fingers, to say nothing of the mouths, cheeks, and noses, of man, woman, and child? Is it surprising that people who had been on short allowance for a considerable time past took advantage of the occasion and ate till they could hardly stand?
Truly they made a night of it. Their Indian visitors, who constituted themselves camp-followers, gorged themselves to perfect satisfaction, and even the dogs, who had a full allowance, licked their lips that night with inexpressible felicity.
Chapter Seven.
Some of the Shadows of a Buffalo-Hunter’s Life.
In order to give the women time to prepare some pemmican for them, Victor Ravenshaw and his companions agreed to spend another day with the hunters, and again, as a matter of course, followed them to the chase.
The same wild pursuit, accompanied by accidents, serious and serio-comic, took place, and success again attended the hunt, but the day did not end so happily, owing to an event which filled the camp with great anxiety. It happened at the close of the day.
The men were dropping into camp by twos and threes, wearied with hard work, more or less covered with dust and blood, and laden with buffalo tongues. Carts, also, were constantly coming in, filled with meat. The women were busy cutting up and drying the meat in the sun, or over a slow fire, melting down fat, pounding the dried meat with stones, and manufacturing bags out of the raw hides. Chatting and merry laughter resounded on all sides, for pemmican and bales of dried meat meant money, and they were coining it fast.