Fresh green stalks of grass rustled and swayed in the warm breeze.

The late summer wind blew up from the south, pulling and pushing the stalks back and

forth in an undulating rhythm.

The distinctive smell of a thunderstorm hung in the air lurking somewhere in the distance,

where the steel gray clouds intruded on the bright blue sky above the prairie.

The plains extended for miles, an unbroken sea of broad grassland rolling on and on toward

the horizon.

But it wasn't entirely featureless.

There was a river flowing through a valley with a low ridge at the eastern edge.

Little gullies and depressions snaked through the landscape, leading off from rivers and streams

at right angles where the herds of bison tramped down to find water.

As of hooves, time after time, pounded the earth downward, creating a network of paths

amid the otherwise uniform prairie.

A herd of the enormous creatures, mothers with their young calves, elderly matriarchs,

bellowing bulls jockeying for position in the coming rut, chumped placidly at the grass

near the shallow end to one such a roya, a barely noticeable depression cutting through

the rise of the higher ground.

Considering their numbers, hundreds of them, it was surprisingly quiet.

The rustling of the grass and the wind was clearly audible above the bulls grunting in

the muleing of the calves.

The bison never saw the group of hunters creeping toward them from the north, downwind, where

the animals keen sense of smell wouldn't alert them to the danger.

...