Winnetou, the Apache Knight | Page 5

buffaloes?"
"They surely can. Bisons they are, genuine bisons beginning their travels, and the first I
have seen. You see Mr. White was right: buffaloes and Indians. We saw only a footprint
of the red men, but the buffaloes are there before our eyes in all their strength. What do
you say about it?"
"We must go up to them."

"Sure."
"And study them."
"Study them? Really study them?" he asked glancing at me sidewise in surprise.
"Yes; I never saw a buffalo, and I'd like to watch them."
I felt the interest of a naturalist, which was perfectly incomprehensible to little Sam. He
rubbed his hands together, saying: "Watch them, only watch them! Like a child putting
his eye to a rabbit's hole to see the little bunnies! O you 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