within good rifle shot. I then stood up, took deliberate aim just behind the shoulder, and fired. He gave a quick jump, looked around and started toward me on the run with head down, in usual fashion, for a charge. My thought was that I had hit, but not hurt him. I dropped into the grass and made my way on hands and knees as fast as possible toward camp, a little agitated. Losing sight of me the animal soon stopped, stood still a few minutes and then suddenly dropped to the ground. He had been shot through the heart.

This was my first and last buffalo, as sneaking up to them and shooting them down did not seem much more like sport than shooting down oxen. I was neither a sufficiently expert rider nor hunter to chase and shoot them on horseback. The one I shot was carved by Sollitt and one of the men, and furnished us fresh meat for breakfast and several meals thereafter.

During the day we passed a ranch, occupied by a man and his son, twelve or fourteen years old. The boy had eight or ten buffalo calves in a pen, which he said he had caught himself and intended to sell to parties returning to their homes in the East. He had a well-trained little pony, which he would mount, with a rope in hand that had a noose at the end, and ride directly into the midst of a small drove of buffalo, and while they scattered and ran would slip his rope about the neck of a calf and lead it back to the ranch. The calf would side up to the pony and follow it along as if under the delusion that it was following its mother. The man traded in cattle by picking up estrays and buying, for a song, those that were footsore and sick, keeping them till in condition and then selling them to passing trains that were in need.

We now began to see buffalo quite plentifully off to the southwest, in small groups, and in droves of twenty or more. Sometimes hunters on horseback, who had camped near Kearney, were indulging in the excitement of the hunt, chasing and shooting, and in turn being chased by the enraged animals. That evening we camped on the verge of the great herd that extended some sixty or seventy miles to the westward, and blackened the bluffs to the south, and the great plains beyond as far as the eye could reach. This great herd was not a solid, continuous mass, but was divided up into innumerable smaller herds or droves consisting of from fifty to two hundred animals each. These kept together when grazing, marching or running, the bulls on the outside and the cows and calves in the center. Sometimes these small herds were separated from each other by a considerable space.

This great herd had probably started northward from the Arkansas in the spring and had now reached the Platte, where they lingered for water and the better grass that was found along the river. Following in the wake and prowling on the outskirts of this slowly moving host, were thousands of wolves, collected from the distant plains, to feast upon the young and the weakly, and the carcasses of those that were killed by accident or the hunter's gun.

The turn for watching the cattle the first half of that night fell to the lot of two of the boys from Chicago. The cattle were grazing in a good meadow off toward the river, half a mile from camp. At dusk the boys went off to take charge of them. After dark the wolves began to howl in all directions and sometimes it sounded as if a hundred hungry ones were fighting over a single carcass. Then the buffalo bulls chimed in with the music and bellowed, apparently by thousands, at the same time. Pandemonium seemed to reign. The two boys got nervous, then frightened and finally panic-stricken, and long before midnight came rushing into camp declaring that they were surrounded by droves of hungry wolves and furious buffalo. The cattle were also disturbed and inclined to scatter and wander off.

Next morning early, all of us, except the cook, started off to hunt them up. Some went up stream, some down, and some back along the road we had come. Tobias and myself waded the river to the north side to hunt them there, but we found neither cattle nor cattle tracks. We did find a huge rattlesnake, which we killed. The river was about three-quarters of a mile wide, and in no place over two feet deep. Wading it was easy enough if one kept moving, but if he stood still he would gradually sink into the quicksand till it was difficult to extricate his feet.

By noon, after this thorough search, we had collected all of our oxen but two, which could not be found. Sollitt was very suspicious of cattle thieves, and, whenever an ox was lost, his first opinion was that it had been stolen. Mine was that it had strayed off and hidden in some ravine or clump of bushes. He decided that these two lost ones had been taken by some ranchman or passing train. I believed they had gone off with the buffalo and that when they wanted drink badly they would come back to the river. I therefore concluded to let the train go on, while I, with the pony and some food, would stay behind and patrol the river for a day or two. I rode back eastward along the river's edge, searching in the bushes, and at night came to a ranch, near which I picketed the pony and slept on the ground. Next morning, after first examining the ranchman's cattle, I started westward again, making another thorough search as I went along. In the afternoon I found the stragglers quietly eating grass near the river, and then drove them along as fast as possible till the train was overtaken.

We were now right in the midst of the great herd, through which we journeyed for nearly five days. The anxiety they gave us was greater than that of any of our previous troubles. To avoid having the oxen stampeded, or run off with the buffalo at night, we wheeled our wagons into a circle when camping at the end of a day's drive, and thus formed a corral, into which we put as many oxen as it would hold, for the night, and chained the rest in their yokes to the wagon wheels on the outside. This was hard on the oxen, as they could not rest as well as when free, nor could they graze a part of the night, as was their habit. Whenever we looked off to the south or southwest, we would see dozens and dozens of the small droves of one or two hundred buffalo moving about in all directions. Some of the droves would be quietly eating grass, some marching in a slow, stately walk, and others on the run, going back and forth between their grazing grounds and the river. But each separate drove kept in quite a compact body.

Sometimes they would keep off from the trail along which we traveled, for several hours at a time and not trouble us. At other times they would be going in such great numbers across our route, passing to and from the river, that we had to wait hours for them to get out of our way. Often a drove would get frightened at a passing wagon, the report of a gun, the barking of a dog, or some imaginary enemy, and would start on a run which soon became a furious stampede, the hindermost following those before them, and in their blind fury crowding them forward with such irresistible force that the leaders could not stop if they would. If they came suddenly to a deep gully the foremost would tumble in till it was full, and thus form a bridge of bone and flesh over which the rest would pass. Several times these frightened droves passed so near our wagons as to be alarming.

One drove came within a few yards of one of our wagons, and some of the drivers peppered them with bullets from their pistols. Though these frightened droves could not be