his rifle, which leaned against the cart, throw over his shoulder the strap of his pouch and powder-horn, and with his moccasins in his hand walk quietly across the sand toward the opposite side of the river.  This was very easy; for though the sands were about a quarter of a mile wide, the water was nowhere more than two feet deep.  The farther bank was about four or five feet high, and quite perpendicular, being cut away by the water in spring.  Tall grass grew along its edge.  Putting it aside with his hand, and cautiously looking through it, the hunter can discern the huge shaggy back of the buffalo slowly swaying to and fro, as with his clumsy swinging gait he advances toward the water.  The buffalo have regular paths by which they come down to drink.  Seeing at a glance along which of these his intended victim is moving, the hunter crouches under the bank within fifteen or twenty yards, it may be, of the point where the path enters the river.  Here he sits down quietly on the sand.  Listening intently, he hears the heavy monotonous tread of the approaching bull.  The moment after he sees a motion among the long weeds and grass just at the spot where the path is channeled through the bank.  An enormous black head is thrust out, the horns just visible amid the mass of tangled mane.  Half sliding, half plunging, down comes the buffalo upon the river-bed below.  He steps out in full sight upon the sands.  Just before him a runnel of water is gliding, and he bends his head to drink.  You may hear the water as it gurgles down his capacious throat.  He raises his head, and the drops trickle from his wet beard.  He stands with an air of stupid abstraction, unconscious of the lurking danger.  Noiselessly the hunter cocks his rifle.  As he sits upon the sand, his knee is raised, and his elbow rests upon it, that he may level his heavy weapon with a steadier aim.  The stock is at his shoulder; his eye ranges along the barrel.  Still he is in no haste to fire.  The bull, with slow deliberation, begins his march over the sands to the other side.  He advances his foreleg, and exposes to view a small spot, denuded of hair, just behind the point of his shoulder; upon this the hunter brings the sight of his rifle to bear; lightly and delicately his finger presses upon the hair-trigger.  Quick as thought the spiteful crack of the rifle responds to his slight touch, and instantly in the middle of the bare spot appears a small red dot.  The buffalo shivers; death has overtaken him, he cannot tell from whence; still he does not fall, but walks heavily forward, as if nothing had happened.  Yet before he has advanced far out upon the sand, you see him stop; he totters; his knees bend under him, and his head sinks forward to the ground.  Then his whole vast bulk sways to one side; he rolls over on the sand, and dies with a scarcely perceptible struggle.