Wolves they could have shot; but they were not as yet prepared to satisfy their hunger upon the flesh of these filthy, fox-like, creatures.

That large troops of wolves had gone forward, hanging after the great herd, was evident.

Every now and then our hunters saw proof of this, in the clean-picked skeletons of buffaloes that lay along the path.

These they knew were such as had got disabled and separated from the drove; for numerous accidents of this kind--owing to the bulls goring one another, or being enfeebled by age and disease--take place during the migration of the vast herds.

Were it not so, the wolves would never think of following them as they do; for a buffalo in good health can scatter a whole pack of these cowardly, skulking jackals.
But the average accidents which occur when such numbers of buffaloes are together--the prospect of old ones, weak and weary, being separated from their companions--of numbers getting mired upon the banks of some muddy river, or drowned in crossing it--of cows heavy with calf falling behind, or with calves already on the hoof, loitering for the purpose of suckling them--the prospect of these chances, combined with the still more enticing hope that the buffaloes will be attacked by a party of Indian hunters, often carries a pack of wolves for hundreds of miles across the prairie on the heels of a great herd.