But they were not cattle.
There was the huge hump with the curly mane, and there were the short
horns and slender, neat little legs which had seemed so out of
proportion in the old Indian's sketch. From their point of view they
could see the hunters cut out one animal and attack him with their
arrows and lances without arousing the fears of the rest. The creatures
moved quietly along, grazing and pawing now and then, darkening the
plain almost as far as the eye could see. The trader spent several days
with the tribe, and when he went south again he had a bundle of hides so
large that he had to drag it on a kind of hurdle made of poles. He had
helped the Indians decorate some of the hides they had, and whenever he
did this he wrote his own name, the date, and a few words, somewhere on
the skin.
[Illustration: "THE CREATURES DARKENED THE PLAIN ALMOST AS FAR AS EYE
COULD SEE."--_Page_ 191]
"Why do you do this?" asked the medicine man, putting one long bronze
finger on the strange marks.
"It is a message," said Cabeca de Vaca. "If any of my own people see it
they will know who made the pictures."
The Indian looked at him thoughtfully.
"You are very clever," he said. "You ought to be a medicine-man."
This put another idea into the exile's head.
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