rightfully to the buffalo. Yet there was warrant for the title, for very soon it became evident that—the black calf's sire had been a bison—some lone wanderer from the herds of the upper country who in his loneliness had found a mate among the wild black cattle of the Low Country swamps.
Black Bull showed plainly his buffalo blood. His great size, his splendid frontlet and beard, his highhumped shoulders, the shaggy coat of hair on neck and hump—all these came from his sire. But he was jet-black instead of brown; his tail was long; his horns, of much greater length and curving forward, were far more serviceable weapons than a buffalo's horns. From his mother's race he had inherited also something even more valuable than those long forward-pointing pikes—a brain alert instead of sluggish. The wild black cattle of the swamps, originating as strays from the vast herds of the rich white planters near the coast, had deteriorated in size but increased enormously in numbers despite the preying beasts with which the great swamps teemed. With each generation they had grown sharper of wit, keener of scent and of hearing, until in these respects they rivaled even the deer. In bulk and in form, in massive head and shaggy coat, Black Bull was his father's son. But the brain in that head was not the brain of a buffalo.
All this Keenta had pointed out to Ahowhe long
