I looked over my shoulder: there in plain sight was another herd, tearing down on our rear. As I afterward discovered, this was the herd stampeded in separate columns by Munger and Thompson, joined again after making their detour. For nearly a mile in width stretched a line of angry faces, a rolling surf of wind-blown hair, a row of quivering lanterns, burning reddish-brown. The column was as deep as the line. I quickly bethought myself: It is death to get involved in a herd if my horse stumbles. If I have both pluck and luck to ride steadily in the line of the stampede until I can insinuate myself laterally, and make a break out through the side of the herd, all may go well with me, as it has with several hunters of my acquaintance, caught in this predicament. It was death to turn back. I should be trampled and gored to death. I should be wiped out like a grease-spot, and Nig with me, for the terror of the herd was too extreme for me to hope to restampede them, with Munger and Thompson probably somewhere close on their rear.

All this flashed through my mind in an instant. Nig was steadily shortening the distance between me and the herd ahead. I had just made up my mind to ride as long as he would stand in the line of the stampede, when the herd before me divided into two columns to pass around a low butte I had seen before. Quick as lightning this providential move of theirs suggested the means of my salvation. I made for the mound, reached its summit, and to Nig's great disgust, though he was fearfully short-breathed, and trickling with rivulets of sweat, halted him instantly to await the rear column. I had not many minutes of anxiety. The herd saw me fifty rods off, but, as I expected,

paid no more attention to me than if I had been a grass-blade. Nor could they if they would. All stampedes are alike, whether of men or animals. For the front line to swerve is to be knocked down and slain instanter. This vis a tergo gives the van a courage of despair, while it takes away all option of movement. So the angry front line of faces saw me without fear. I had only a minute of certain life. The next would see me safe or beaten to a mummy. I dismounted, held my horse's head away from the coming herd, and faced it myself, with the rein over my arm and my rifle poised. As the herd got within a hundred yards of the mound, I delivered one steadily aimed ball at the fore-shoulder of the nearest bull. He gave a single wild jump, and began limping on three legs. I had done for him. For a few seconds, fear of his pressing comrades gave him enough extra speed to keep up with the rest; but before the line reached the foot of the mound, he had tumbled, and the whole host was rushing over him. This obstacle, and the terror of his fate, sent the first lateral panic into the hearts of the herd. Once more, as the front line came so close that I could almost have jumped my horse on to their backs, I fired my rifle again. The ball did no damage to any but itself, flattening like putty on the thick-matted Gibraltar of one old bull's frontispiece, but it served my turn, and split the herd. They divided just in time to avoid being crowded over the mound by their rear, and in a moment I was standing on a desert island, in a sea of billowing backs, flowed around on either side by a half-mile current of crazy buffaloes.

Here was abundant opportunity to shoot, but not the slightest anxiety for doing so. I was safe; I had

such a view of buffaloes as I never could have expected, never would enjoy again. This was all-sufficient to me. I stood and studied the host with devouring eyes, while my horse snorted and pulled at the bridle in a passion of enthusiasm.

The herd were about five minutes in passing me. During that time I saw the calves which Munger was looking for, and Thompson's much desiderated cows, beside numerous yearlings and two-year-olds, both bulls and heifers. There also appeared here and there a veteran bull, carrying about him the marks of battle in the form of a stiff or broken leg, or a bad scar in the flank. One old fellow made as good time on three legs as any of his comrades on four, though his useless member was in front, where most of the strain falls in running. His progress was absolutely comical. He reminded me of an aged ape hopping, with one hand on the ground to steady him, and his countenance wore the most whimsical expression, his mat of hair being torn off in places, so as to disclose more of his features than I ever saw in any other buffalo. As he scrambled past in steady-by-jerks, Dundreary style, he seemed saying, "To be bothered in this way at my time of life!"

When the herd had passed, and joined the body I had lately been chasing, the combined force stopped about half a mile ahead. I turned, as the last laggards panted by the mound, and, for the first time since I reached my elevation, paid attention to the westward. Then I understood why the stampeders had halted so soon. They had come up with the main herd!

Yes, there, beyond peradventure, in my plain sight, grazed the entire buffalo army of Middle Kansas. As

far as the western horizon the whole earth was black with them. From a point a mile in front of me their rear line extended on the north to the bluffs bounding the Republican, on the south to the very summits of the White Rock Buttes, an entire breadth of more than six miles. I had no way of measuring the unbounded plain, looking westerly; but a man on horseback, in the clear air of the region, and with a field-glass of Voigtlander's as good as mine, can recognize an object of the size of a buffalo at ten miles' distance. I will not add my name to the list of travellers who have stated undeniable truths that nobody would believe. When I say that a hundred square feet of room was an exaggerated average allowance to the individual buffalo in the close-packed herd before me, I have contributed all the elements necessary to each of my readers for his personal calculation of the number in sight. I never saw any Eastern acquaintance who would credit me when I stated my own estimate diminished by one half. Let it be enough to acknowledge that it reaches millions. As for comparisons, flies on a molasses barrel, ants on an ant-hill, tadpoles in a puddle, all these strong but vulgar similitudes fail to express the ideas of multitude awakened by looking at that mighty throng. Arithmetic is as petty to the task as the lightning calculator to the expression of a hurricane. I have seen the innumerable herd of laughing waves in a broad sunny I have seen the same multitude lashed to madness by a tropical cyclone; I remember my first and my succeeding impressions of Niagara; but never did I see an incarnation of vast multitude, or resistless force, which impressed me like the main herd of the buffalo. The desire to shoot, kill, and capture utterly

sea;

passed away. I only wished to look, and look till I could realize or find some speech for the greatness of Nature that silenced me.

I had gazed for nearly an hour, when it suddenly occurred to me that more than twice that time had elapsed since I saw any of my comrades. I referred to the sun, for I had no watch in my hunting-shirt, and saw that it was at least three o'clock in the afternoon. I took one last look at the buffaloes, and came down from my mount of vision. The way back I was quite certain of. It seemed the easiest thing in the world to retrace my steps. I remounted Nig, and began pushing for home.

I remembered that our camp was nearly due north from a certain characteristic butte of the White Rock range. I resolved to bring this butte abreast of me, travelling down the middle of the plain, between it and the Republican, then to strike due north for the river, over the ground which had become familiar to us through two days' hunt.

This matter was easier to promise than accomplish. I little knew the deception of which a traveller was susceptible on these endlessly uniform divides. I might almost as well have hoped to travel by foammarks on the waves of the sea as by any idiosyncrasies in this rolling sward. But as yet I was ignorant and happy.

My chief troubles were the now plainly apparent fatigue of my horse, reacting from his late enthusiasm; a pair of badly sun-burnt hands, the bridle one of which, being the more exposed, was swollen into a very respectable red velvet pincushion, and felt as if it had been dipped in a jar of aqua-fortis. I was also exceedingly hungry, and had been unwise enough to