lacked concert in their late confusion,
they wheeled front and rear, and rolled off up the valley, still
enveloped in a cloud of white, biting dust.

In such a chase speed and courage of one's horse are the main
essentials. My horse, luckily for me, was able to lay me alongside my
game within a few hundred yards. I coursed close to a big black bull
and, obeying injunctions old Auberry had often given me, did not touch
the trigger until I found I was holding well forward and rather low. I
could scarcely hear the crack of the rifle, such was the noise of hoofs,
but I saw the bull switch his tail and push on as though unhurt, in
spite of the trickle of red which sprung on his flank. As I followed
on, fumbling for a pistol at my holster, the bull suddenly turned, head
down and tail stiffly erect, his mane bristling. My horse sprang aside,
and the herd passed on. The old bull, his head lowered, presently
stopped, deliberately eying us, and a moment later he deliberately lay
down, presently sinking lower, and at length rolled over dead.

I got down, fastening my horse to one of the horns of the dead bull. As
I looked up the valley, I could see others dismounted, and many vast
dark blotches on the gray. Here and there, where the pursuers still hung
on, blue smoke was cutting through the white. Certainly we would have
meat that day, enough and far more than enough. The valley was full of
carcasses, product of the wasteful white man's hunting. Later I learned
that old Mandy, riding a mule astride, had made the run and killed a
buffalo with her own rifle!

I found the great weight of the bull difficult to turn, but at length I
hooked one horn into the ground, and laying hold of the lower hind leg,
I actually turned the carcass on its back. I was busy skinning when my
old friend Auberry rode up.

"That's the first time I ever saw a bull die on his back," said he.

"He did not die on his back," I replied. "I turned him over."

"You did--and alone? It's rarely a single man could do that, nor have I
seen it done in all my life with so big a bull."

I laughed at him. "It was easy. My father and I once lifted a loaded
wagon out of the mud."

"The Indians," said Auberry, "don't bother to turn a bull over. They
split the hide down the back, and skin both ways. The best meat is on
top, anyhow"; and then he gave me lessons in buffalo values, which later
I remembered.

We had taken some meat from my bull, since I insisted upon it