The Bison or American Buffalo. 235 



experience. Once I took a team in thirty-six hours across 

 a country where there was no water ; but by good luck it 

 rained heavily in the night, so that the horses had plenty 

 of wet grass, and I caught the rain in my slicker, and so 

 had enough water for myself. Personally, I have but 

 once been as long as twenty-six hours without water. 



The party pitched their permanent camp in a canyon 

 of the Brazos known as Canyon Blanco. The last few 

 days of their journey they travelled beside the river 

 through a veritable hunter's paradise. The drought had 

 forced all the animals to come to the larger watercourses, 

 and the country was literally swarming with game. Every 

 day, and all day long, the wagons travelled through the 

 herds of antelopes that grazed on every side, while, when- 

 ever they approached the canyon brink, bands of deer 

 started from the timber that fringed the river's course ; 

 often, even the deer wandered out on the prairie with the 

 antelope. Nor was the game shy ; for the hunters, both 

 red and white, followed only the buffaloes, until the huge, 

 shaggy herds were destroyed, and the smaller beasts were 

 in consequence but little molested. 



Once my brother shot five antelopes from a single 

 stand, when the party were short of fresh venison ; he was 

 out of sight and to leeward, and the antelopes seemed 

 confused rather than alarmed at the rifle-reports and the 

 fall of their companions. As was to be expected where 

 game was so plenty, wolves and coyotes also abounded. 

 At night they surrounded the camp, wailing and howling 

 in a kind of shrieking chorus throughout the hours of 

 darkness ; one night they came up so close that the fright- 



