Winnetou, the Apache Knight | Page 5

young tenderfoot, what I must put up with in you! I don't want to watch them or study them, I tell you, but hunt them. They mean meat - meat, do you understand? and such meat! A buffalo-steak is more glorious than ambrosia, or ambrosiana, or whatever you call the stuff the old Greeks fed their gods with. I must have a buffalo if it costs me my life. The wind is towards us; that's good. The sun's on the left, towards the valley, but it's shady on the right, and if we keep in the shade the animals won't see us. Come on."
He looked to see if his gun, "Liddy," as he called it, was all right, and I hastily overhauled my own weapon. Seeing this, Sam held up his horse and asked: "Do you want to take a hand in this?"
"Of course."
"Well, you let that thing alone if you don't want to be trampled to jelly in the next ten minutes. A buffalo isn't a canary bird for a man to take on his finger and let it sing."
"But I will -"
"Be silent, and obey me," he interrupted in a tone he had never used before. "I won't have your life on my conscience, and you would ride into the jaws of certain death. You can do what you please at other times, but now I'll stand no opposition."
Had there not been such a good understanding between us I would have given him a forcible answer; but as it was, I rode after him in the shadow of the hills without speaking, and after a while Sam said in his usual manner: "There are twenty head, as I reckon. Once a thousand or more browsed over the plains. I have seen early herds numbering a thousand and upward. They were the Indians' food, but the white men have taken it from them. The redskin hunted to live, and only killed what he needed. But the white man has ravaged countless herds, like a robber who for very lust of blood keeps on slaying when he is well supplied. It won't be long before there are no buffaloes, and a little longer and there'll be no Indians, God help them! And it's just the same with the herds of horses. There used to be herds of a thousand mustangs, and even more. Now a man is lucky if he sees two together."
We had come within four hundred feet of the buffaloes unobserved, and Hawkins reined in his horse. In the van of the herd was an old bull whose enormous bulk I studied with wonder. He was certainly six feet high and ten long; I did not then know how to estimate the weight of a buffalo, but I should now say that he must have weighed sixteen hundred ponnds - an astounding mass of flesh and bone.
"That's the leader," whispered Sam, "the most experienced of the whole crowd. Whoever tackles him had better make his will first. I will take the young cow right back of him. The best place to shoot is behind the shoulder-blade into the heart; indeed it's the only sure place except the eyes, and none but a madman would go up to a buffalo and shoot into his eyes. You stay here, and hide yourself and your horse in the thicket. When they see me they'll run past here; but don't you quit your place unless I come buck or call you."
He waited until I had hidden between two bushes, and then rode slowly forward. It seemed to me this took great courage. I had often read how buffaloes were hunted, and knew all about it; but there is a great difference between a printed page and the real thing. To-day I had seen buffaloes for the first time in my life; and though at first I only wished to study them, as I watched Sam I felt an irresistible longing to join in the sport. He was going to shoot a young cow. Pshaw! that, I thought, required no courage; a true man would choose the strongest bull.
My horse was very restless; he, too, had never seen buffaloes before, and he pawed the ground, frightened and so anxious to run that I could scarcely hold him. Would it not be better to let him go, and attack the old bull myself? I debated this question inwardly, divided between desire to go and regard for Sam's command, meantime watching his every movement.
He had approached within a hundred feet of the buffaloes, when he spurred his horse and galloped into the herd, past the mighty bull, up to the cow which he had selected. She pricked up her ears, and started to run. I saw Sam shoot. She staggered, and her head dropped, but