rapidly than before.  Pauline, who was still sick and jaded, began to groan heavily; and her yellow sides were darkened with sweat.  As we were crowding together over a lower intervening hill, I heard Reynal and Raymond shouting to me from the left; and looking in that direction, I saw them riding away behind a party of about twenty mean-looking Indians.  These were the relatives of Reynal’s squaw Margot, who, not wishing to take part in the general hunt, were riding toward a distant hollow, where they could discern a small band of buffalo which they meant to appropriate to themselves.  I answered to the call by ordering Raymond to turn back and follow me.  He reluctantly obeyed, though Reynal, who had relied on his assistance in skinning, cutting up, and carrying to camp the buffalo that he and his party should kill, loudly protested and declared that we should see no sport if we went with the rest of the Indians.  Followed by Raymond I pursued the main body of hunters, while Reynal in a great rage whipped his horse over the hill after his ragamuffin relatives.  The Indians, still about a hundred in number, rode in a dense body at some distance in advance.  They galloped forward, and a cloud of dust was flying in the wind behind them.  I could not overtake them until they had stopped on the side of the hill where the scouts were standing.  Here, each hunter sprang in haste from the tired animal which he had ridden, and leaped upon the fresh horse that he had brought with him.  There was not a saddle or a bridle in the whole party.  A piece of buffalo robe girthed over the horse’s back served in the place of the one, and a cord of twisted hair lashed firmly round his lower jaw answered for the other.  Eagle feathers were dangling from every mane and tail, as insignia of courage and speed.  As for the rider, he wore no other clothing than a light cincture at his waist, and a pair of moccasins.  He had a heavy whip, with a handle of solid elk-horn, and a lash of knotted bull-hide, fastened to his wrist by an ornamental band.  His bow was in his hand, and his quiver of otter or panther skin hung at his shoulder.  Thus equipped, some thirty of the hunters galloped away toward the left, in order to make a circuit under cover of the hills, that the buffalo might be assailed on both sides at once.  The rest impatiently waited until time enough had elapsed for their companions to reach the required position.  Then riding upward in a body, we gained the ridge of the hill, and for the first time came in sight of the buffalo on the plain beyond.

They were a band of cows, four or five hundred in number, who were crowded together near the bank of a wide stream that was soaking across the sand-beds of the valley.  This was a large circular basin, sun-scorched and broken, scantily covered with herbage and encompassed with high barren hills, from an opening in which we could see our allies galloping out upon the plain.  The wind blew from that direction.