In such a chase speed and courage of one’s horse are the main essentials.  My horse, luckily for me, was able to lay me alongside my game within a few hundred yards.  I coursed close to a big black bull and, obeying injunctions old Auberry had often given me, did not touch the trigger until I found I was holding well forward and rather low.  I could scarcely hear the crack of the rifle, such was the noise of hoofs, but I saw the bull switch his tail and push on as though unhurt, in spite of the trickle of red which sprung on his flank.  As I followed on, fumbling for a pistol at my holster, the bull suddenly turned, head down and tail stiffly erect, his mane bristling.  My horse sprang aside, and the herd passed on.  The old bull, his head lowered, presently stopped, deliberately eying us, and a moment later he deliberately lay down, presently sinking lower, and at length rolled over dead.

I got down, fastening my horse to one of the horns of the dead bull.  As I looked up the valley, I could see others dismounted, and many vast dark blotches on the gray.  Here and there, where the pursuers still hung on, blue smoke was cutting through the white.  Certainly we would have meat that day, enough and far more than enough.  The valley was full of carcasses, product of the wasteful white man’s hunting.  Later I learned that old Mandy, riding a mule astride, had made the run and killed a buffalo with her own rifle!

I found the great weight of the bull difficult to turn, but at length I hooked one horn into the ground, and laying hold of the lower hind leg, I actually turned the carcass on its back.  I was busy skinning when my old friend Auberry rode up.

“That’s the first time I ever saw a bull die on his back,” said he.

“He did not die on his back,” I replied.  “I turned him over.”

“You did—­and alone?  It’s rarely a single man could do that, nor have I seen it done in all my life with so big a bull.”

I laughed at him.  “It was easy.  My father and I once lifted a loaded wagon out of the mud.”

“The Indians,” said Auberry, “don’t bother to turn a bull over.  They split the hide down the back, and skin both ways.  The best meat is on top, anyhow”; and then he gave me lessons in buffalo values, which later I remembered.

We had taken some meat from my bull, since I insisted upon it in spite of better beef from a young cow Auberry had killed not far above, when suddenly I heard the sound of a bugle, sharp and clear, and recognized the notes of the “recall.”  The sergeant of our troop, with a small number who did not care to hunt, had been left behind by Belknap’s hurried orders.  Again and again we heard the bugle call, and now at once saw coming down the valley the men of our little command.

“What’s up?” inquired Auberry, as we pulled up our galloping horses near the wagon line.

“Indians!” was the answer.  “Fall in!” In a moment most of our men were gathered at the wagon line, and like magic the scene changed.