irregular large text), "B. Ounce." His comrades called him
"Bounce."

"You see, March," continued Bounce in a quiet way, thrusting his rugged
countenance close to the embers occasionally, and blowing up the spark
which he had kindled by means of flint, steel, and tinder--"you see,
this is a cur'ous wurld; it takes a feelosopher to onderstand it
c'rectly, and even he don't make much o't at the best. But I've always
noticed that w'en the time for wakin' up's come, we've got to wake up
whether we like it or no; d'ye see, lad?"

"I'd see better if you didn't blow the ashes into my eyes in that way,"
answered March, laughing at the depth of his companion's philosophical
remark. "But I say, old chap," (March had no occasion to call him "old
chap," for Bounce was barely forty), "what if we don't fall in with a
herd?"

"Then we shall have to go home without meat that's all," replied Bounce,
filling and lighting his pipe.

"But I promised my mother a buffalo-hump in less than three days, and
the first day and night are gone."

"You'd no right to promise your mother a hump," returned the
plain-spoken and matter-of-fact hunter. "Nobody shud never go to
promise wot they can't perform. I've lived, off an' on, nigh forty
years now, and I've obsarved them wot promises most always does least;
so if you'll take the advice of an oldish hunter, you'll give it up,
lad, at once."

"Humph!" ejaculated March, "I suppose you began your _obsarvations_
before you were a year old--eh, Bounce?"

"I began 'em afore I was a day old. The first thing I did in this life
was to utter an 'orrible roar, and I obsarved that immediately I got a
drink; so I roared agin, an' got another. Leastwise I've bin told that
I did, an' if it wasn't obsarvation as caused me for to roar w'en I
wanted a drink, wot wos it?"

Instead of replying, March started up, and shading his eyes with his
right hand, gazed intently towards the horizon.

"Wot now, lad?" said Bounce, rising quickly. "Ha! buffaloes!"

In half a minute the cords by which the two horses were fastened to pegs
driven into the plain, were coiled up; in another half-minute the
saddle-girths were buckled; in half a second more the men were mounted
and tearing over the prairie like the wind.

"Ha, lad," remarked Bounce with one of his quiet smiles--for he was a
pre-eminently quiet man--"but for them there prairie-hens we'd ha' slept
this chance away."

The buffaloes, or, more correctly s