In summer it was covered with life.
Here grew thick grass and wild flowers and the buffalo passed in
millions.
It inspired in Henry a certain awe and yet by its very vagueness and
immensity it attracted. Just as he had wished to explore the secrets of
the forest he would like now to tread the Great Plains and find what
they held.
They turned toward the southwest in search of buffalo and were caught in
a great storm of wind and hail. The cold was bitter and the wind cut to
the bone. They were saved from freezing to death only by digging a rude
shelter through the snow into the side of a hill, and there they
crouched for two days with so little food left in their knapsacks, that
without game, they would perish, in a week, of hunger, if the cold did
not get the first chance. The most experienced hunters went forth, but
returned with nothing, thankful for so little a mercy as the ability to
get back to their half-shelter.
Henry at last took his rifle and ventured out alone--the others were too
listless to stop him--and before the noon hour he found a buffalo bull,
some outcast from the herd which had gone southward, struggling in the
snow.
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