two after midnight
With him now were the renegades Blackstaffe and Wyatt , and they , too , urged on the chase . They felt that if Henry could be taken or destroyed , the four would fall easier victims , and then the eyes of the woods that watched so well for the settlers would have gone out forever . All through the night the warriors ranged the forest , hunting for the trail . The moon and the stars returned , bringing with them a light that helped , and an hour or two after midnight a Shawnee found traces that led toward the prairie . He called to his comrades and they followed it to the prairie , where they lost it . The Indian warriors , looking cautiously from the brush , saw in the open the clustered black forms , looming gigantic in the moonlight , and they heard the heavings and puffings and groanings of the big bulls . Directly in front of them , across a low narrow ridge , lay the biggest bull of them all , a buffalo that stirred now and then as if he were glad to rub his body against the soil , which was rougher there than elsewhere .