increased fury. Sullivan was a very powerful man, and though weakened by
his long fast and fatiguing march, despair gave him courage and nerved
his arm with strength, and with great presence of mind he seized the
animal as it struck him on the side with its horn, drawing out his knife
with his left hand, in the faint hope of being able to strike it into
his adversary's throat. But the struggle was too unequal to be
successful, and the buffalo had shaken him off, and thrown him to the
ground, previous to trampling him to death, when he heard the sharp
crack of a rifle behind him, and in another instant the animal sprang
into the air, then fell heavily close by, and indeed partly upon, the
prostrate Sullivan. A dark form in the Indian garb glided by a moment
after, and plunged his hunting-knife deep into the neck of the buffalo,
though the shot was too true not to have taken effect, having penetrated
to the brain; but the great arteries of the neck are cut, and the animal
thus bled, to render the flesh more suitable for keeping a greater
length of time.

The Indian then turned to Sullivan, who had now drawn himself from
under the buffalo, and who, with mingled feelings of hope and fear,
caused by his ignorance whether the tribe to which the Indian belonged
was friendly or not, begged of him to direct him to the nearest white
settlement.

"If the weary hunter will rest till morning, the eagle will show him
the way to the nest of his white dove," was the reply of the Indian,
in that figurative style so general among his people; and then taking
him by the hand he led him through the rapidly increasing darkness,
until they reached a small encampment lying near the river, and under
the cover of some trees which grew upon its banks. Here the Indian
gave Sullivan a plentiful supply of hominy, or bruised Indian corn