Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent his straying, and advanced to contemplate my victim. I am nothing of a sportsman: I had been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the magnitude of the game and the excitement of an adventurous chase. Now that the excitement was over, I could but look with commiseration upon the poor animal that lay struggling and bleeding at my feet. His very size and importance, which had before inspired me with eagerness, now increased my compunction. It seemed as if I had inflicted pain in proportion to the bulk of my victim, and as if there were a hundred-fold greater waste of life than there would have been in the destruction of an animal of inferior size.
To add to these after-qualms of conscience, the poor animal lingered in his agony. He had evidently received a mortal wound, but death might be long in coming. It would not do to leave him here to be torn piecemeal, while yet alive, by the wolves that had already snuffed his blood, and were skulking and howling at a distance, and waiting for my departure, and by the ravens that were flapping about croaking dismally in the air. It became now an act of mercy to give him his quietus and put him out of his misery. I primed one of the pistols, therefore, and advanced close up to the buffalo. To inflict a wound thus in cool blood I found a totally different thing from firing in the heat of the chase. Taking aim, however, just behind the fore shoulder, my pistol for once proved true; the ball must have passed through the heart, for the animal gave one convulsive throe and expired.
While I stood meditating and moralizing over the wreck I had so wantonly produced, with my horse grazing near me, I was rejoined by my fellow-sportsman the Virtuoso; who, being a man of universal adroitness, and withal, more experienced and hardened in the gentle art of “venerie,” soon managed to carve out the tongue of the buffalo, and delivered it to me to bear back to the camp as a trophy.
Our solicitude was now awakened for the young count. With his usual eagerness and impetuosity he had persisted in urging his jaded horse in pursuit of the herd, unwilling to return without having likewise killed a buffalo. In this way he had kept on following them hither and thither, and occasionally firing an ineffectual shot, until by degrees horseman and herd became indistinct in the distance, and at length swelling ground and strips of trees and thickets hid them entirely from sight.
By the time my friend, the amateur, joined me, the young count had been long lost to view. We held a consultation on the matter. Evening was drawing on. Were we to pursue him, it would be dark before we should overtake him, granting we did not entirely lose trace of him in the gloom. We should then be too much bewildered to find our way back to the encampment; even now our return would be difficult. We determined, therefore, to hasten to the camp as speedily as possible, and send out our half-breeds and some of the veteran hunters, skilled in cruising about the prairies, to search for our companion.
We accordingly set forward in what we supposed to be the direction of the camp. Our weary horses could hardly be urged beyond a walk. The twilight thickened upon us; the landscape grew gradually indistinct; we tried in vain to recognize various landmarks which we had noted in the morning. The features of a prairie are so similar as to baffle the eye of any but an Indian or a practised woodsman. At length night closed in. We hoped to see the distant glare of camp-fires; we listened to catch the sound of the bells about the necks of the grazing horses. Once or twice we thought we distinguished them: we were mistaken. Nothing was to be heard but a monotonous concert of insects, with now and then the dismal howl of wolves mingling with the night breeze. We began to think of halting for the night and bivouacking under the lee of some thicket. We had implements to strike a light; there was plenty of firewood at hand, and the tongues of our buffaloes would furnish us with a repast.
Just as we were preparing to dismount we heard the report of a rifle, and shortly after the notes of the bugle, calling up the night guard. Pushing forward in that direction, the camp-fires soon broke on our sight, gleaming at a distance from among the thick groves of an alluvial bottom.
As we entered the camp, we found it a scene of rude hunters’ revelry and wassail. There had been a grand day’s sport, in which all had taken a part. Eight buffaloes had been killed; roaring fires were blazing on every side; all hands were feasting upon roasted joints, broiled marrow bones, and the juicy hump, far famed among the epicures of the prairies. Right glad were we to dismount and partake of the sturdy cheer, for we had been on our weary horses since morning without tasting food.
[It may be said in conclusion that the count—a young Swiss who accompanied the party—failed to return, and the next day a search for him had to be made, in which the Indians displayed strikingly their surprising skill in following a trail. The missing adventurer was at length found. He had spent the night in a tree for fear of wolves, and was heartily glad to see the face of his fellow-man again.]