He spurred forward fast as he could go, jerking loose the thong which held his rifle fast in the scabbard under his leg.
The tumultuous roaring rumble came on steadily, the more apparent by a widening and climbing cloud of dust, which betokened that a body of large animals was coming up through the "breaks" from the bed of the stream to the prairie on which the wagons stood.

Presently there appeared at the brink, looming through the white dust cloud, a mingling mass of tangled, surging brown, a surface of tossing, hairy backs, spotted with darker fronts, over all and around all the pounding and clacking of many hoofs.

It was the stampede of the buffalo which had been disturbed at their watering place below, and which had headed up to the level that they might the better make their escape in flight.
Head into the wind, as the buffalo alone of wild animals runs, the herd paid no heed to the danger which they sought to escape, but upon which they were now coming in full front.

The horses of the hunters, terrified at this horrid apparition of waving horned heads and shaggy manes, plunged and snorted in terror, seeing which the first rank of the buffalo in turn fell smitten of panic, and braced back to avoid the evil at their front.

Overturned by the crush behind them, these none the less served to turn the course of the remainder of the herd, which now broke away to the right, paralleling the course of the stream and leaving the wagons of the hunters behind them and at their left.