ng what I would find, and yet refusing to believe. I will not say
that his big heart had failed him; perhaps it did not seem to him worth
while to face the somber shadows to the bitter end, lying alone in that
deep hollow in the earth. It may be that the night looked long and
comfortless, and it was his wish to go out with the sun. He lay beside
the fallen tree, his eyes turned blankly to the darkening sky, the
six-shooter in his hand as he had held it for the last time. I
straightened his arms, and covered his face with the blood-stained coat
and left him to his long sleep. And even old Piegan lifted his hat and
murmured "Amen" in all sincerity as we turned away.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BISON.

When we reached high ground again the twilight was fading to a
semicircle of bloodshot gray in the northwest. The wind still blew
squarely in our faces. Down in the coulee we had not noticed it so much,
but now every breath was rank with the smell of grass-smoke, and each
mile we traversed the stink of it grew stronger.

"We'll be blamed lucky if we don't run into a prairie-fire before
mornin'," Piegan grumbled. "If that wind don't let up, she'll come
a-whoopin'. It'll be a sure enough smoky one, too, with this mixture uh
dry grass an' the new growth springin' up. It didn't rain so hard down
in this country, I notice. Ain't that a lalla of a smell?"

Neither of us answered, and Piegan said no more. It grew dark--dark in
the full sense of the word. The smoke-burdened atmosphere was impervious
to the radiance of the stars. Only by Smith's instinctive sense of
direction did we make any headway toward the mouth of Sage Creek. Even
MacRae owned himself somewhat at fault, once we came among the buffalo.
They barred our path in dimly-seen masses that neither halted,
scattered, nor turned aside when we galloped upon them in the gloom. We
were the ones who gave the road, riding now before, now behind the
indistinct bulk of a herd, according as we judged the shorter way.

More dense became the brute mass. Whirled this way and that, as Piegan
led, I knew neither east, west, north or south from one moment to
another. Betimes we found a stretch of open country, and gave our horses
the steel, but always to bring up suddenly against the bison plodding in
groups, in ranks, in endless files. They were ubiquitous; stolid
obstructions that we could neither avoid nor ride down. Our progress
became monotonous, a succession of fruitless atte