The hunting party meanwhile pursued their way to the plains, following an old Indian track to the south-west for about eighty miles. Passing through a hilly country, well wooded and watered, on the morning of the fourth day they reached the brow of a hill, whence they saw the prairie stretching away before them. La Ronde quickly detected five buffalo, grazing about a mile distant, and a camp was immediately made. After a hasty meal of dry pemmican--a fire being dispensed with for fear of frightening the game--they prepared for the hunt. The day was unusually warm, and in a weak moment La Ronde and Cheadle both divested themselves of leather shirt and capote before starting. After a great deal of dodging and crawling on hands and knees through the snow, they gained a point where, peering through a little patch of scrub, they saw the five bulls within twenty yards of them. La Ronde, in his excitement, hurriedly whispered instructions to Cheadle in a most unintelligible jargon of mingled French, English, and Cree. The latter, equally excited, and bewildered by directions he could not understand, hesitated to fire. La Ronde, in despair, stealthily raised his gun, when Cheadle, unwilling to be forestalled, raised his also, and in so doing incautiously protruded his head out of cover. In an instant the whole band started off full speed, saluted, as they went, by an ineffectual volley at their sterns. Many were the mutual recriminations, and fiercely did La Ronde “sacré.” The buffalo were gone, no more to be seen, and small was the pemmican remaining in the camp. Far away in the distance the frightened bulls began to slacken their pace, and at last commenced slowly walking and feeding along. The only chance remaining was to try and come up with them again, and the disappointed hunters set off in pursuit at a run, carefully screening themselves from observation. After about two hours’ hard work, they succeeded in getting before them, and lying concealed in their path, killed two as they passed slowly by. It was now nearly dark, and the party were three or four miles from camp. It was impossible to fetch the horses and sleighs, and carry the meat back that night, and if the carcasses were left, the wolves would pick the bones clean by morning. There was, therefore, no choice but to camp on the spot for the night. But little shelter could be found, and the only wood was a few dry poplar saplings.