The reddish light glinted for a moment in the eyes of Morse, but he said nothing.  Young though he was, he had a capacity for silence.  West was not sensitive to atmospheres, but he felt the force of this young man.  It was not really in his mind to quarrel with him.  For one thing he would soon be a partner in the firm of C.N.  Morse & Company, of Fort Benton, one of the biggest trading outfits in the country.  West could not afford to break with the Morse interests.

With their diminished cargo the traders pushed north.  Their destination was Whoop-Up, at the junction of the Belly and the St. Mary’s Rivers.  This fort had become a rendezvous for all the traders within hundreds of miles, a point of supply for many small posts scattered along the rivers of the North.

Twelve oxen were hitched to each three-wagon load.  Four teams had left Fort Benton together, but two of them had turned east toward Wood Mountain before the party was out of the Assiniboine country.  West had pushed across Lonesome Prairie to the Sweet Grass Hills and from there over the line into Canada.

Under the best of conditions West was no pleasant traveling companion.  Now he was in a state of continual sullen ill-temper.  For the first time in his life he had been publicly worsted.  Practically he had been kicked out of the buffalo camp, just as though he were a drunken half-breed and not one whose barroom brawls were sagas of the frontier.

His vanity was notorious, and it had been flagrantly outraged.  He would never be satisfied until he had found a way to get his revenge.  More than once his simmering anger leaped out at the young fellow who had been a witness of his defeat.  In the main he kept his rage sulkily repressed.  If Tom Morse wanted to tell of the affair with McRae, he could lessen the big man’s prestige.  West did not want that.

The outfit crossed the Milk River, skirted Pakoghkee Lake, and swung westward in the direction of the Porcupine Hills.  Barney had been a trapper in the country and knew where the best grass was to be found.  In many places the feed was scant.  It had been cropped close by the great herds of buffalo roaming the plains.  Most of the lakes were polluted by the bison, so that whenever possible their guide found camps by running water.  The teams moved along the Belly River through the sand hills.

Tom Morse was a crack shot and did the hunting for the party.  The evening before the train reached Whoop-Up, he walked out from camp to try for an antelope, since they were short of fresh meat.  He climbed a small butte overlooking the stream.  His keen eyes swept the panorama and came to rest on a sight he had never before seen and would never forget.

A large herd of buffalo had come down to the river crossing.  They were swimming the stream against a strong current, their bodies low in the water and so closely packed that he could almost have stepped from one shaggy head to another.  Not fifty yards from him they scrambled ashore and went lumbering into the hazy dusk.  Something had frightened them and they were on a stampede.  Even the river had not stopped their flight.  The earth shook with their tread as they found their stride.