KILLED BY THE INDIANS 



had probably already poisoned the buffalo, for I 

 noticed the bones of several wolves there, which 

 would go to show that the wolves had died from 

 eating the poisoned meat of the buffalo/* 



"Well, yes likely," returned Tom. "He put 

 up a good fight, though, from what you say, an' 

 seems to have been a man that's had some pre- 

 vious experience in that line. Did you notice 

 any bullet hole in his horse's skull?" 



"No. I looked for that, but there was no sign 

 that the horse had been shot in the head; but he 

 might have been shot elsewhere." 



"Tain't likely," replied the old man thought- 

 fully, "for you say the horse's bones show that 

 he died close to the buffalo, an' the man in be- 

 tween 'em, as his bones show an' the writing on 

 the shoulder-blade says. He must have cut its 

 throat. How far off from the man's bones was 

 the bones of the Injun ponies that you found?" 



"About three hundred yards," I replied. 



"Well, he must have had a Sharp's rifle,* for 

 a muzzle-loader wouldn't kill that far. But he's 



* There were no metallic cartridge shells in use in those days, the 

 cartridges for Sharp's rifles and all firearms being put up in paper. 

 The Sharp's rifle carbine, which was one of the earliest breech-loaders 

 brought into use on the frontier, had been adopted by the govern- 

 ment for the cavalry service and was also a favorite buffalo gun 

 among frontiersmen generally. Their extreme effective range was 

 eight hundred yards, the longest-range guns then in use on the plains. 

 The Colt's navy pistols we used then would shoot with the force 

 and accuracy of a rifle for about three hundred yards. I remember 

 seeing a sergeant in the Second Dragoons kill an antelope one day 

 with a Colt's navy (taking a dead rest) at a distance of three hun- 

 dred paces. The regulation "pace" is thirty inches. 



157 



