THE BISON.
When we reached high ground again the twilight was fading to a
semicircle of bloodshot gray in the northwest. The wind still blew
squarely in our faces. Down in the coulee we had not noticed it so much,
but now every breath was rank with the smell of grass-smoke, and each
mile we traversed the stink of it grew stronger.
"We'll be blamed lucky if we don't run into a prairie-fire before
mornin'," Piegan grumbled. "If that wind don't let up, she'll come
a-whoopin'. It'll be a sure enough smoky one, too, with this mixture uh
dry grass an' the new growth springin' up. It didn't rain so hard down
in this country, I notice. Ain't that a lalla of a smell?"
Neither of us answered, and Piegan said no more. It grew dark--dark in
the full sense of the word. The smoke-burdened atmosphere was impervious
to the radiance of the stars. Only by Smith's instinctive sense of
direction did we make any headway toward the mouth of Sage Creek. Even
MacRae owned himself somewhat at fault, once we came among the buffalo.
They barred our path in dimly-seen masses that neither halted,
scattered, nor turned aside when we galloped upon them in the gloom. We
were the ones who gave the road, riding now before, now behind the
indistinct bulk of a herd, according as we judged the shorter way.
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