Part 20 (1/2)

”A buffalo, over there”

The two boys saw a dark for forward

”Quietly,” said the hunter ”Always approach dangerous game cautiously when they are down--especially buffalo;” and with his finger on the trigger he went up slow-footed

But the buffalo was stone-dead--a great bull with an immense boss between the bend of his sharp horns

”It's the luck of hunting,” said Mr Hureat beast ”Soame at your back door, so to speak One of you boys will stay with Muata to skin and cut up It will be a good lesson”

The two looked at each other, and then away over the plain Skinning and cutting up was not exactly a

”Each in his turn,” said the hunter ”Co turned up his shi+rt-sleeves

It was hard work, this cutting up, but Muata was a hly

The great hide was taken off in one piece without a slit; then long strips ofover the branches of a tree

When the rest of the meat had been stripped off, they packed it all away in the hide, slung the bundle to a sapling, and, with each end of the pole on a shoulder, they slowly carried the whole to the ca hoped that his labours were over; but they had only co on which to hang the strips, after each had been well peppered to keep off the flies, for the drying and s This took another slice out of the day; and when Venning had washed in the river, and cooked and eaten his buffalo-steak, he resigned hiame, while Muata, who had melted down the fat from the kidneys, sat and rubbed the oil into his limbs till his skin shone

”Have you seen , with a keen eye on a bit of crooked stick that had seemed to move

”Many”

”And you understand their ways?”

”I have watched as you watch the stick that is not a stick”

Venning picked up an insect--a strange creature which had adapted itself to its surroundings by pretending to be a dried twig

”Tell me what you saw”

”I saw the twin bulls when they were calves, and I saw them when they led the herd, and when they lost the leadershi+p I watched them Ow aye, I knew their ways Sometime, when I was yet a boy, I could understand what they said”

”What they said, chief?”

”See, the creatures are like men in their ways, and men are like anied what the buffalo would say if he could talk like men”

”And as the talk? Tell it iven speech to animals when I have watched alone”

”I will tell you what I thought when I was young, and watched the things of the forest The wisest as of the forest, the wisest were even a buffalo coho never had calf, and thehead Haw!

”Now, the pack hunted on the sarazed, but the bull who led the troop ise He took counsel with the old cow that was calf-less, and the pack could never find the fat heifers or the younger calves unguarded In the troop were two young bulls--brothers; and these I had watched groatched fro and fierce, and they eyed the old bull full Scarcely would they turn froa in his mind how it came to happen that the earth had been fresh turned While he stood, the young bulls pressing behind suddenly put their horns to his flanks and urged him forward Mawoh! The old bull stepped on to the newly turned earth, and went down into a pit that the hunters had dug He called to the troop to run frolade

”Haw! A young dog of the pack heard the bellow froreat bull Then, with his nose to the ground, he ran upon the trail of the troop till he saw the the cows They pushed the old cow aside, and later went through the tall grass into a shallow vlei, where they ed in theran back to the pack This is what he said, as I understood--

”'Behold, O reat bull, even the leader, is fallen in the trap made by man in the path'