The Lordly Buffalo. 



were then no cattle south of me, where there are now 

 very many thousand head, and the buffalo had been 

 plentiful in the country for a couple of winters past, but 

 the last of the herds had been destroyed or driven out six 

 months before, and there were only a few stragglers left. 

 It was one of my first hunting trips ; previously I had 

 shot with the rifle very little, and that only at deer or 

 antelope. I took as a companion one of my best men, 

 named Ferris (a brother of the Ferris already mentioned) ; 

 we rode a couple of ponies, not very good ones, and each 

 carried his roll of blankets and a very small store of food 

 in a pack behind the saddle. 



Leaving the cow-camp early in the morning, we 

 crossed the Little Missouri and for the first ten miles 

 threaded our way through the narrow defiles and along the 

 tortuous divides of a great tract of Bad Lands. Although it 

 was fall and the nights were cool the sun was very hot in 

 the middle of the day, and we jogged along at a slow 

 pace, so as not to tire our ponies. Two or three black- 

 tail deer were seen, some distance off, and when we were 

 a couple of hours on our journey, we came across the 

 fresh track of a bull buffalo. Buffalo wander a great dis- 

 tance, for, though they do not go fast, yet they may keep 

 travelling, as they graze, all day long ; and though this one 

 had evidently passed but a few hours before, we were not 

 sure we would see him. His tracks were easily followed 

 as long as he had kept to the soft creek bottom, crossing 

 and recrossing the narrow wet ditch which wound its way 

 through it ; but when he left this and turned up a wind- 

 ing coulie that branched out in every direction, his hoofs 



