The Trail Book | Page 3

and without
quite knowing why, he began to move away from that place, tip-toe and
slippingly, like a wild creature in the woods when it does not know
who may be about. He told himself it would never do to have the
animals come alive without Dorcas Jane, and before all those stupid,
staring folk who might come in at any minute and spoil everything.
That night, after their father had gone off clanking to his furnaces,
Dorcas heard her brother tapping on the partition between their rooms,
as he did sometimes when they played "prisoner." She knew exactly
what he meant by it and tapped back that she was ready.
Everything worked out just as they had planned. They heard the strange,
hollow-sounding echoes of the watchman's voice dying down the halls,
as stair by stair they dropped the street lamps below them, and saw
strange shadows start out of things that were perfectly harmless and
familiar by day.
There was no light in the gallery except faint up-and-down glimmers
from the glass of the cases, and here and there the little spark of an eye.
Outside there was a whole world of light, the milky way of the street
with the meteor roar of the Elevated going by, processions of small
moons marching below them across the park, and blazing constellations
in the high windows opposite. Tucked into one of the window benches
between the cases, the children seemed to swing into another world
where almost anything might happen. And yet for at least a quarter of
an hour nothing did.
"I don't believe nothing ever does," said Dorcas Jane, who was not at
all careful of her grammar.
"Sh-sh!" said Oliver. They had sat down directly in front of the Buffalo
Trail, though Dorcas would have preferred to be farther away from the
Polar Bear. For suppose it hadn't been properly stuffed! But Oliver had
eyes only for the trail.
"I want to see where it begins and where it goes," he insisted.

So they sat and waited, and though the great building was never
allowed to grow quite cold, it was cool enough to make it pleasant for
them to sit close together and for Dorcas to tuck her hand into the crook
of his arm....
All at once the Bull Buffalo shook himself.
[Illustration: Line Art of Mastadons]

II
WHAT THE BUFFALO CHIEF TOLD
"Wake! Wake!" said the Bull Buffalo, with a roll to it, as though the
word had been shouted in a deep voice down an empty barrel. He
shook the dust out of his mane and stamped his fore-foot to set the herd
in motion. There were thousands of them feeding as far as the eye
could reach, across the prairie, yearlings and cows with their calves of
that season, and here and there a bull, tossing his heavy head and
sending up light puffs of dust under the pawings of his hoof as he took
up the leader's signal.
"Wake! Wa--ake!"
It rolled along the ground like thunder. At the sound the herds gathered
themselves from the prairie, they turned back from the licks, they rose
up plop from the wallows, trotting singly in the trails that rayed out to
every part of the pastures and led up toward the high ridges.
"Wa-ak--" began the old bull; then he stopped short, threw up his head,
sniffing the wind, and ended with a sharp snort which changed the
words to "What? What?"
"What's this," said the Bull Buffalo, "Pale Faces?"
"They are very young," said the young cow, the one with the going
look. She had just been taken into the herd that season and had the

place of the favorite next to the leader.
"If you please, sir," said Oliver, "we only wished to know where the
trail went."
"Why," said the Buffalo Chief, surprised, "to the Buffalo roads, of
course. We must be changing pasture." As he pawed contempt upon the
short, dry grass, the rattlesnake, that had been sunning himself at the
foot of the hummock, slid away under the bleached buffalo skull, and
the small, furry things dived everywhere into their burrows.
"That is the way always," said the young cow, "when the Buffalo
People begin their travels. Not even a wolf will stay in the midst of the
herds; there would be nothing left of him by the time the hooves had
passed over."
The children could see how that might be, for as the thin lines began to
converge toward the high places, it was as if the whole prairie had
turned black and moving. Where the trails drew out of the flat lands to
the watersheds, they were wide enough for eight or ten to walk abreast,
trodden hard and white as country roads. There was