Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/153

Rh when left the other two, my traps being the farthest away, some three miles down the valley. After leaving the other two I struck out down the valley on a turkey trot, that being my usual gait when alone. I had not gone far when I heard two gun shots. Thinking that Uncle Kit and Johnnie had been attacked by the Indians, I turned in the direction that I heard the shooting, and ran back much faster than I had come, but had not gone far when I saw ahead of me, up the narrow valley, a band of about twenty bison coming direct for me. I thought by shooting the leader it might check their speed and perhaps cause them to change their course. So I brought my gun to my face and dropped the leader, but it neither caused the others to halt or change their course, and they were making a bee line for me, and there was not a tree in reach large enough for me to climb nor a place of any kind that I could hide.

Now I was not long in making up my mind that I had a first-class foot-race on my hands—as an Irishman might say—and after running some distance I looked back and saw the bison were on me at every jump. Had I only known the nature of bison, which I learned afterward were not so vicious as buffalo, I could have turned to the right or left and they would have passed on; but thinking that they were after me, I got out like a quarter-horse, putting in my best licks to try to reach a wash-out that I knew of ahead of me. Thinking that if I only could reach that ditch I might have some possible show for my life, I lost no time in getting there, but got right down to business and did the prettiest running I have ever done in my life. Every time I looked back I saw