rink it up?" asked Will.

"No, they're bearing straight ahead, looking neither to the right nor to
the left, going I've no idea where."

"Two million hearts that beat as one," said Will.

They reached the dip in due time, finding it a shallow depression of a
half acre, well grown with substantial cottonwoods and containing, as
they had surmised, a pool of good water, perhaps twenty feet each way,
and two feet deep. Here the animals drank freely, enabling them to save
the store they carried for more stringent times, and then all rested
among the trees, while myriads of buffaloes thundered by.

Hour after hour they marched past, not a single one stopping for the
water and deep grass they must have smelled so near. At times, they were
half hidden by the vast cloud of dust in which they moved, and which was
of their own making, and at other times the wind of the plains blew it
away, revealing the lowered heads and huge black forms, pressing on with
some sort of instinct to their unknown destination.

Will watched them a long time and the tremendous sight at last laid a
spell upon him. Apparently they had no leaders. What power moved them
out of a vast and unknown region into another region, alike vast and
unknown? Leaderless though they were, they advanced like the columns of
an army and with a single purpose. He climbed into a fork of one of the
cottonwoods and used his glasses once more.

First he looked into the northwest, where they were going, and he could
not now see the head of the shaggy army or of the dust column that hung
above it, as both had passed long since under the horizon. And looking
into the southeast he could not see, either, the end of the coming army
or of its dust cloud. It emerged continually from under the rim of the
horizon, and there was such an effect of steadiness and permanency that
it seemed to the lad as if that vast column, black and wide, would be
coming on forever.

Then he caught a glimpse of something glinting through the dust and from
the other side of the herd a full two miles away. Only good eyes and the
most powerful glasses of the time could have detected it at such a
moment, but he saw it twice, and then thrice and once more. Then,
waiting for the dust to lift a little, he discerned a brilliant ray of
sunlight striking on the head of a lance. Looking further and
searchingly he was able to note the figures of Indians on their ponies,
armed with lances, and cutting out from th