Annette - The Metis Spy

"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.