The sand-hills were but a short half-mile distant. Another minute would decide the contest. Just when I thought the stag must win, I saw [the Sioux] urge his horse to a still faster effort. He [was now almost at the flank of the wapiti]. Then I saw him with the quickness of lightning unsling his short bow, and place an arrow on the string. One sharp draw, apparently without any aim, and the shaft sped upon its way, piercing the heart of the giant stag, which, with one great leap forward into space, rolled dead upon the prairie.
[The Sioux was now almost at the flank of the wapiti.]
He was a noble specimen of those gigantic animals now growing scarce on the American prairies.
From fore hoof to tip of shoulders he stood seventeen hands high. His antlers were the finest I ever saw. They branched from his frontlet in perfect symmetry and regularity, each tier was the exact counterpart of the opposite one. From brow to tip they measured more than five feet, and their ribbed sides shone like roughened bronze, while the strong tips were polished ivory. Standing breathless beside my breathless horse, I looked on the dead animal in mute admiration, while the Sioux set to at the more practical work of getting some meat for dinner.
“You may well look at him,” he said to me; “he is the finest of his tribe I have yet seen.”
“It is almost a pity we have killed such a noble beast,” I replied; “to lay such a proud head low.”
“Yes,” answered the Indian. “But it is in such things that we learn the great work of war. To ride a chase to the end; to shoot an arrow fast and true after a six-mile gallop; to watch every turn of the game enemy, and to note every stride of the steed; to avoid the deadly charge of the buffalo, and to wheel upon his flank as he blindly pursues his impetuous onset; to stand steady before the advance of the savage grizzly bear, and to track the wary moose with silent footfall into the willow thickets,—these are the works by which, in times of peace, the Indian learns his toil in the deeper game of war.
“And then, the health, the strength, the freshness of these things; the pleasure they give us in after-time when by the camp fire in the evening we run back in memory some day of bygone chase. Well, now we have other work to do. This run has taken us far from our trail. The sun gets low upon the plain. We must away.”
So taking with us a few tit-bits of the wapiti, we retraced our steps to where the pack-horses had been left with Donogh when I joined the pursuit, and then rode briskly towards the now declining sun.