CHAPTER III
SHAGGO IN A HOLE
Down, down, down through the air sailed Shaggo, the mighty buffalo, after he had leaped from the cliff over the strong wire fence. He looked toward the ground, to make sure he would not land on the fence itself.
“For if I did that,” thought Shaggo, “my legs would get all tangled up, and then I could never run away and find a big place in which to roam. No, indeed! I don’t want anything like that to happen.”
So he was glad when he saw that he was going to land on the other side of the fence. Once more he looked down. The earth seemed rushing up to meet him, but of course he was only falling down to land on it.
“I’m going to fall into that clump of bushes, just as I thought I should,” said the buffalo to himself.
A moment later he had crashed into the midst of a tangle of green leaves and branches. Into the midst of the bushes fell the mighty Shaggo. Down through them he went, breaking twigs and limbs of small trees, for Shaggo was very heavy.
And in another instant Shaggo fell with a loud thud and a thump. He fell on one side, landing on one of his front shoulders, and at once a terrible pain shot all through his body. It was a much worse pain than he had ever before felt, even when Wuffo, the oldest buffalo of all the herd, had once butted Shaggo head over heels when Shaggo had done something wrong. And it was a much worse pain than any Shaggo had felt when Poko had shoved him with the short, black horns that all buffaloes wear.
“Dear me, this is terrible!” thought Shaggo to himself, in the way buffaloes have of thinking. “I wonder what I have fallen on.”
But he suddenly lost all power of thinking, for his senses seemed to leave him, and all he knew was that he had fallen into a place that was very, very dark and lonesome.
The fact was that Shaggo had fallen so hard that, for a while, he was knocked senseless. If you have ever tumbled downstairs and have bumped your head very hard, you perhaps know how it feels to lose your senses. You seem to go to sleep before it is bedtime. Well, this is what happened to Shaggo. He didn’t know what happened after he had jumped and felt that sharp pain in his shoulder, except that it grew very dark.