Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/192

 It was a great prophecy and all the village approved it. Black Bull, as wild and wary now as the deer, ranged far and wide. Keenta could not follow him on all his journeyings, and for weeks at a time never saw him. Yet the young warrior knew the wild bull's favorite ranges, trailed him when opportunity offered, and viewed him from the thickets to make sure that no bullet had harmed him, that no snake had struck him and that his health was good.

A white hunter's bullet, a rattlesnake's venom, disease—these were the dangers which Keenta feared for Black Bull. The red hunters, aware of the prophecy, would not shoot him. His strength and his cunning would keep him safe from puma and bear and wolf pack, and from the huge alligators lurking in ambush in the lagoons and rivers where the deer and the wild black cattle drank. Most of all, Keenta feared the white hunters. These seldom came into Black Bull's range, because the region on that side of the great cypress swamp was recognized as an Indian hunting ground. But sometimes small parties of them passed through, and their long, heavy rifles shot straight and far.

Black Bull, cropping the grasses languidly and often lifting his massive shaggy head to look about