on one knee to secure
steadiness of aim, he brought the sights to bear exactly behind the
animal's left shoulder, and fired. The spirt of flame and the little
jet of filmy blue smoke extorted a sharp ejaculation of astonishment
from those who were near enough to notice it, but it was as nothing
compared with the shout of mingled amazement, terror, and relief that
went up when the huge beast stumbled, fell forward on his head, turned a
complete somersault, and lay still, slain at the very instant when,
having overtaken the fugitive, he had lowered his head to impale the
shrieking man upon his horns.

With such startling abruptness did the huge beast collapse that the
pursued officer did not realise the fact until he had run a farther
distance of some thirty yards or so, and even then, when at length he
halted and looked back at the prostrate and motionless animal, he seemed
quite unable to understand that it was dead and harmless; for he shouted
an order to his men to close in round the buffalo and secure it with
cords before it recovered itself and resumed the aggressive. It was not
until a few of the bolder spirits, having cautiously approached the
carcass, nearly enough to perceive the bullet hole and the blood flowing
from it, had satisfied themselves that the brute was in very truth dead,
and had borne emphatic testimony to the extraordinary fact, that he was
able to screw up his own courage to the point of personal investigation.
Then he calmly made his way back to the road and, approaching
Grosvenor, demanded an explanation of the seeming miracle; but even
after he had been told, and the rifle exhibited to him and its powers
laboriously explained, he seemed quite unable to understand, and was at
last fain to dismiss the mystery with an impatient shrug of the
shoulders, and an order for the march to be resumed.

But Dick had seen a man tossed by the buffalo, and had judged, by the
victim's shriek of agony, that he was badly hurt; he therefore kept his
eyes open as they passed along the road, and sharply directed Grosvenor
to call upon the officer to halt when presently they came upon a group
of about a dozen persons standing by the side of the road surrounding a
little group consisting of two persons, a man and a woman; the man
bleeding profusely from a ghastly wound in the thigh, and already grey
and sharp of feature under the shadow of death, while the woman crouched
helplessly in the dust, supporting the wou