The Lordly Buffalo 281 



again turned away and made off; and, being evi- 

 dently very shy and accustomed to being harassed 

 by hunters, must have traveled a long distance be- 

 fore stopping, for we followed his trail for some 

 miles until it got on such hard, dry ground that his 

 hoofs did not leave a scrape in the soil, and yet did 

 not again catch so much as a glimpse of him. 



Soon after leaving his trail we came out on the 

 great, broken prairies that lie far back from the 

 river. These are by no means everywhere level. 

 A flat space of a mile or two will be bounded by a 

 low cliff or a row of small round-topped buttes ; or 

 will be interrupted by a long, gentle sloping ridge, 

 the divide between two creeks; or by a narrow 

 canyon, perhaps thirty feet deep and not a dozen 

 wide, stretching for miles before there is a crossing 

 place. The smaller creeks were dried up, and were 

 merely sinuous hollows in the prairie; but one or 

 two of the larger ones held water here and there, 

 and cut down through the land in bold, semicircu- 

 lar sweeps, the outside of each curve being often 

 bounded by a steep bluff with trees at its bottom, 

 and occasionally holding a miry pool. At one of 

 these pools we halted, about ten o'clock in the morn- 

 ing, and lunched ; the banks were so steep and rotten 

 that we had to bring water to the more clumsy of 

 the two ponies in a hat. 



Then we remounted and fared on our way, scan- 

 ning the country far and near from every divide, 

 but seeing no trace of game. The air was hot and 

 still, and the brown, barren land stretched out on 



