Just as soon as they could see without trouble they turned their backs on Camp Hope, and were soon following the trail of the buffalo.
“If I thought we would have any trouble about getting a supply of wood, so as to start a fire in a hurry after we get our meat,” Roger observed before they abandoned the camp, “I’d be tempted to tote some of this good fuel on my back.”
“No need of doing anything like that,” Dick assured him. “If there is anything that is plentiful around here it is fuel for a fire. I already have some small bits of choice stuff laid away for a time of need.”
The wind had shifted the surface of the dry snow to some extent, so that in places they found the tracks of the buffalo almost covered. But Mayhew was a born trailer, and found no difficulty in following the animal.
“You see,” he told the boys at one time, “this may be a good thing for us, because we can tell where the beast started fresh this morning.”
It was not twenty minutes after he made this remark when the scout joyously showed them where the buffalo had spent the night. They could plainly see the imprint of his hairy coat in the snow where he had lain down. The cold had no particular terror for such a rugged beast and, as he went on in about the same general direction as his previous trail, they believed they were right in assuming that the buffalo, through instinct, knew where forage was to be found, and was heading thither.
All possible haste was now made by the three pursuers. It meant much to them that they presently overtake the quarry, or else run upon some other game.
Roger was already feeling weak from lack of food. Only his will power enabled him to keep alongside the others in that hot chase. He strained his vision to the utmost, in the endeavor to be the first to discover signs of the welcome presence of the big animal with the shaggy mane, which it seemed was their only hope of staving off starvation.
When crows again flew overhead and continued their scornful cawing, Roger several times aimed his empty gun up at them, as though he would have liked to give the impudent birds of ill omen something to remember him by.
“I really believe they must know we have so little ammunition that nothing could tempt us to waste a grain of powder on them this day,” he declared, angrily, when the clamor of crow scolding grew worse.