e
buckshot whistled hurtlessly among the herd, and Sandy thought to
himself that it was downright cruelty to shoot among them, for the
scattering shot would only wound without killing the animals.

It was safe now for Sandy to emerge from his place of concealment,
and, standing on the rocky point behind which he had been hidden, he
gazed to the west and north. The tumbling masses of buffalo were
scattered far apart. Here and there he could see wide stretches of
prairie, no longer green, but trampled into a dull brown by the tread
of myriads of hurrying feet; and far to the north the land was clear,
as if the main herd had passed down to the southward. Scattered bands
still hurried along above him, here and there, nearer to the Fork, but
the main herd had gone on in the general direction of the settlers'
home.

"What if they have gone down to our cabin?" he muttered aloud. "It's
all up with any corn-field that they run across. But, then, they must
have kept too far to the south to get anywhere near our claim." And
the lad consoled himself with this reflection.

But his game was more engrossing of his attention just now than
anything else. He had been taught that an animal should not bleed to
death through a gunshot wound. His big leaden slug had gone directly
through the buffalo's vitals somewhere, for it was now quite dead.
Sandy stood beside the noble beast with a strange elation, looking at
it before he could make up his mind to cut its throat and let out the
blood. It was a young bull buffalo that lay before him, the short,
sharp horns ploughed into the ground, and the massive form, so lately
bounding over the rolling prairie, forever still. To Sandy it all
seemed like a dream, it had come and gone so quickly. His heart
misgave him as he looked, for Sandy had a tender heart. Then he gently
touched the animal with the toe of his boot and cried, "All by my own
self!"

[Illustration: HE GENTLY TOUCHED THE ANIMAL WITH THE TOE OF HIS BOOT AND
CRIED, "ALL BY MY OWN SELF."]

"Well done, Sandy!" The boy started, turned, and beheld his cousin
Oscar gazing open-mouthed at the spectacle. "And did you shoot him all
by your very own self? What with? Charlie's gun?" The lad poured forth
a torrent of questions, and Sandy proudly answered them all with,
"That is what I did."

As the two boys hung with delight over the prostrate beast, Oscar told
the tale of disappointment that the others had to relate. They had
gone up the