"It is a woods or mountain buffalo that has far outgrown its kind, just as there are giants among men," said Roka. "If this were a man and he bore the same relation to his species he would be thirteen or fourteen feet tall," said Will, his voice still shaking a little. "Why, he'd make most elephants ashamed to be so puny and small." "He, too, like the bears, came out of the far North," said Pehansan. "Maybe there is not another in the world like him." "That hide of his is thick with arrows," said Will, "but in so big a skin I don't think the arrow holes will amount to much. We ought to have it. We must carry so grand a trophy back to the village to-night." Roka shook his head. "Not to-night," he said. "We three be strong, but we cannot move the body of this mighty beast, and so we cannot take off the skin." "I will go to the village and bring many people," said Pehansan. Again the wise Roka shook his head. "No," he said, "we three will stay by the bull. You are fast on your snowshoes, Pehansan, and you can shoot your arrows swift, hard and true, but you would never reach the village, which is many miles from here. The fierce wild animals would devour you. We must clear the snow away as fast as we can and build fires all about us. The beasts have already scented the dead bull, and will come to eat him and us." The shadows of the twilight were falling already, and they heard the faint howls of the meat-eaters on the slopes. Will and his comrades, taking off their snowshoes, worked with frantic energy, clearing away the snow with their mittened hands, bringing vast quantities of the dead wood, lighting several fires in a circle about the bull, and keeping themselves, with the surplus wood, inside the circle. Then, while Will fed the fires, Roka and Pehansan carefully cut the arrows out of the body. "We may need them all before morning," said Roka. "It is so, if the growling be a true sign," said Pehansan. The two warriors partly skinned the body and cut off great chunks of meat, which they broiled over the fires, and all three ate. Meanwhile, Will, bow and arrows ready, watched the bushes beyond the circle of flame. If his situation had been nearly primitive in the day it was wholly primitive at night. The mighty bull buffalo was to him truly a mammoth, and beyond the circle of fire, which they dreaded most of all things, the fierce carnivora were waiting to devour the hunters and their giant prize alike. When a pair of green eyes came unusually near Will fired an arrow at a point midway between them, and a terrific howling and shrieking followed. "It was one of the great wolves, I think," said Roka, "and your arrow sped true. The others are devouring him now. Listen, you can hear his big bones cracking!"