THE WASTEFUL WEST 



days. Look about and you might see the grass 

 waving on the same ridge behind which the killer 

 lay, perhaps three hundred yards distant. The 

 heavy Sharps rifle and the hunter would have no 

 other arm in the old days would shoot in practi- 

 cally the same place with its slug of lead half as long 

 as your finger. The main concern of the hunter 

 was to get the range and to keep out of sight. Yes, 

 no doubt that ridge was where he lay. Farther on, 

 at the first waterhole, perhaps three or four miles 

 away, you may find traces of an old camp, with 

 dried bits of wood, sticklike, scattered about. It was 

 here that the wagon stopped, and these were the pegs 

 used in stretching the hides on the earth to dry. 

 The bone-hunters, who after a time swept off every 

 trace of the slaughter of the buffalo, sometimes left 

 the hide-pegs. 



The buffalo-killer, when he set out from camp to 

 locate the herd for the day, took with him his six- 

 teen-pound rifle and his belt full of long, heavy car- 

 tridges. Perhaps he hunted on foot altogether, and 

 certainly he must leave his horse behind while at 

 his specific work of shooting. Crawling to the top 

 of some ridge beyond which he heard the low, mut- 

 tering rumble that told him his game was near, at 

 length he saw his quarry great shaggy, monstrous 

 brutes, savage-looking as bears yet harmless as 



135 



