"My God, a buffalo herd!" she exclaimed. Close at hand was a tall
boulder in the shelter of which she instantly secured her horse; then
running a few paces to where stood a tall, sturdy poplar, she
clambered into its branches.
Then the tremendous mass, headed by maddened bulls, with blazing
eyes and foaming nostrils, drove onward toward the south, like an
unchained hurricane. Some of the terrified beasts ran against the
trees, crushing horns and skull, and fell prone upon the plain to be
trampled to jelly by the hundreds of thousands in rear. The tree upon
which the girl had taken refuge received many a shock from a crazed
bull; and it seemed to Annette from her perch in the branches, as if
all the face of the plains was being hurled toward the south in the
wildest turmoil. Hell itself let loose could present no such
spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping over the lonely
plain under the elfin light of the new-risen moon. Clouds of steam,
wreathing themselves into spectral shapes rose from the dusky,
writhing mass, and the flaming of myriad eyeballs in the gloom
presented a picture more terrible than ever came into the imagination
of the writer of the Inferno.
The spectacle, as observed by the girl some twenty feet from the
ground, might be likened somewhat to a turbulent sea when a sturdy
tide sets against the storm, and the mad waves tumble hither and
thither, foiled and impelled, yet for all the confusion and
obstruction moving in one direction with a sweep and a force that no
power could chain.
Circling among and around the strange dusk clouds of steam that went
up from the herd were scores of turkey buzzards, their obscene heads
bent downward, their sodden eyes gleaming with expectancy. Well they
knew that many a gorgeous feast awaited them wherever boulder, tree
or swamp lay in the path of the mighty herd. At last the face of the
prairie had ceased its surging; no lurid eye-ball light gleamed out
of the dusk; and the tempest of cattle had passed, and went rolling
out into the unbounded stretches of the dim, yellow plain.
When the ground was clear she descended from the tree, every limb
trembling, lest in the delay the Indians should have accomplished
their object. When she reached her horse, she found near by a heap of
dead and struggling buffalo, which in their headlong race had run
over the bluff front of the boulder. When she resumed her gallop she
observed that the great amplitude of rich grasses was like unto a
ploughed field. The herbage had been literally crushed into mire, and
this the innumerable hoofs had churned up with the soft rich soil.
The leguminous odors of the trodden clover and the rank masses of
wild pease, together with the dank earthy smell of the broken sod,
rose offensively in the girl's face. Her course now lay along an
upland covered with straggling copses of white oak and poplar. In the
dim valley beyond, lying drunken under the moonlight, was Hickory
Bush. Upon the solid crest of the little hill the hoofs rang out
sharply; but the girl's quick ear detected noises besides those which
came from the trample of her horse. Still she swept on, with a long
swing, resembling the flight of a swallow. A small grove lay in
front, and as she swerved around this a horseman sprang suddenly
before her.