Identifier: outcasts00fras (find matches)
Title: The outcasts
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Fraser, William Alexander, 1859-1933
Subjects: Animals
Publisher: New York, Charles Scribner's sons

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alf a thousand Buffalo? Nothing — nothing! and the Pound still lay hushed — waiting. Behind the Bull, with implicit faith,pressed the Herd. Only a short distance reached the dreaded yellow-leafed walls that hid the Man enemy. In six 35 The Outcasts breaths he would have passed the narrow mouth, and all his hearts pride would stream out from that death gauntlet to the broad Range that called to him. Even now he drew a sigh of relief;one more jump — oh, spirit of sacred Buffalo! that yawning abyss! the frown of the Pound. He braced his giant forelegs in the graveled earth on its very brink. Too late! Behind, two hundred tons of impetuous fright crashed against his guarding frame; the treacherous sod crumbled; down, down, thirty feet sheer, over the cliff he shot: two,six, a dozen, fifty! beyond all count,one after another, bellowing Cow and screaming Calf, they hurtled into the slaughter-pen of the Blood Indians corral. Inferno upon earth was born in an instant; up from the sun smile of the 36
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ONE AFTER ANOTHER THEY HURTLED INTO THE SLAUGHTER PEN OF THE BLOOD INDIANS CORRAL. The Outcasts prairie rose a shadow of fiends. The walls of the pit, large as the Coliseum,were lined with Redskins of the murder caste. Bow-strings twanged; dag-spears, long-handled, were driven with vengeful swish into the bellowing mob of crazed Buffalo. A sulphurous cloud of gun smoke settled over the pit. Of a verity it was a carnival of demons.Surely it was a mighty Kill! Surely it was a blood fresco on the beautiful earth. Some strong animals, not shattered in their fall, rushed about the pit in erratic frenzy, like victims in a Roman arena.The mocking walls rose on every side, grim, unsurmountable, and thrust the captives back into the shambles; jagged flint arrow-heads stung their hearts like angry serpents. Oh, blessed quick death!better than the smother and trample 37 The Outcasts that beat out the lives of others, inch by inch. The gun fire belched hot in their faces; the bellowing of Bulls almost hushed th

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