ust,
filled with the dim figures of buffaloes, crashed and thundered past,
trampling down bushes, crushing saplings, and driving off to the east,
the pillar of dust still visible long after the buffaloes were deep in
the forest. Red Eagle stared after it. He was a wise old chief, and he
had seen buffaloes before in a panic, but he did not understand the
cause of this sudden and terrific flight.

"It is strange," he said, "but we must let them run. We will go back now
and look for Ware."

CHAPTER IX

THE COVERT

It was one of the most thrilling moments in the life of Henry Ware. He
was in a kind of exaltation that made him equal to any task or danger,
and rather to court, instead of avoiding them. His feeling of kinship
with the herd that was saving him had grown stronger with the dawn. The
dust entering his eyes and mouth, nose and ears, had a singular quality
like burned gun powder that excited him and stimulated him to efforts
far beyond the normal. He was for the time being a physical superman out
of that old dim past, and he was scarcely conscious of anything he was
doing, save that he ran with the great beasts, and was their friend.

His exalted state increased. He continued to shout to the buffaloes to
run faster, and to hurl challenge and defiance at the warriors who could
not hear him. Once more he swung his clubbed rifle and hit a buffalo on
the side, not in anger, but as a salute from one hardy friend to
another, and the buffalo, uttering a bellow, rushed on with mighty
leaps.

Although he could not see them for the dust, Henry knew now by the
crashing and crackling of boughs that they were among the bushes, but
they did not trouble him, as the herd, like a huge wedge, first clearing
the way trampled everything under foot. How long the race lasted and how
long they ran he never knew, but after a lapse of time that was
surcharged with an enormous elation and an unexampled display of
physical power the herd began to recover in some degree from its panic.
Its speed decreased. The great cloud of dust that had wrapped Henry
around and that had saved him sank fast. Then he came suddenly to
himself, out of the exalted regions of the spirit in which he had been
dwelling. His throat was sore from excessive shouting and the sting of
the dust, and it was a few minutes before he was able to clear his eyes
and see with his usual keenness. Then he found that his body, too, ached
from his flight with the buff