Henry nodded and presently he and the shiftless one went away through the woods. Paul, Ross, and Long Jim remained lying at ease in the forest--Paul had learned the great wilderness lesson of patience--and about noon the two returned. They had been spying upon the Spanish camp, and they reported that Alvarez and his men had not moved. "They seem to be waiting for something," said Henry. "Braxton Wyatt is still with them, and they have posted more sentinels in a wider circle. I don't believe they will move camp for several days. So long as they keep theirs there, we'll keep ours here." "O' course," said the shiftless one. "We must keep the watch." Several days passed and there was little to do. One or another of the five at times crept close to the Spanish camp, and always reported that the men there were lounging at their ease and still waiting. Now and then the Spaniards hunted in detachments, usually guided by Braxton Wyatt, and brought in both deer and buffalo. On the fourth day Henry and Paul also went hunting. "The country west of here," said Henry, "opens out into a big prairie, and we may see something worth seeing." Paul did not ask what it was, content to go and see, and the two, rifle on shoulder, slipped away through the woods, taking a direct, western course. Paul noticed that the country soon became much less hilly, and that the forest thinned. After a while hills and forest ceased altogether and the two stood upon the edge of a wide sweep of gently rolling, open country, extending so far that it met the horizon. "Look," said Henry. "A great prairie!" "And look what's on it!" exclaimed Paul. Henry laughed and glanced at his comrade's pleased face. As far as the eye could reach the prairie was covered with a multitude of great, dark animals, grazing on the short, sweet grass. Near by these animals, as Paul saw, were a few feet apart, but further on they seemed to blend into one solid, black, but heaving mass. "A real buffalo herd," said Henry. Paul had seen buffaloes often in Kentucky, but there they were usually in small groups of a dozen or so, owing to the wooded nature of the country, and now he looked for the first time upon a great herd, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, maybe more--one could not calculate. The spectacle appealed greatly to his imaginative temperament. "What a grand sight!" he said. "Yes," said Henry, "it is wonderful, but, Paul, this is nothing to what you can see on the great plains. When I was a captive with the northwestern Indians I've seen a herd that was passing our party all day, and it was also so wide you could not see across it." They stood there some time looking. The huge, savage bulls were on the outskirts of the herd, and just beyond them at the fringe of the forest were snarling timber wolves, waiting for a chance to drag down some careless calf, or a bull weakened to the last degree by old age.