54 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



returned with plenty of their tender meat. The luxuriant 

 but coarse grass they had hitherto seen now changed into 

 the nutritious and curly buffalo grass, and their animals 

 soon improved in appearance on the excellent pasture. In 

 a few days, without any adventure, they struck the Platte 

 Kiver, its shallow waters (from which it derives its name) 

 spreading over a wide and sandy bed, numerous sand-bars 

 obstructing the sluggish current, nowhere sufficiently deep 

 to wet the forder's knee. 



By this time, but few antelope having been seen, the party 

 ran entirely out of meat ; and one whole day and part of 

 another having passed without so much as a stray rabbit pre- 

 senting itself, not a few objurgations on the buffalo grumbled 

 from the lips of the hunters, who expected ere this to have 

 reached the land of plenty. La Bonte" killed a fine deer, 

 however, in the river bottom, after they had encamped, not 

 one particle of which remained after supper that night, but 

 which hardly took the rough edge off their keen appetites. 

 Although already in the buffalo range, no traces of these 

 animals had yet been seen ; and as the country afforded 

 but little game, and the party did not care to halt and lose 

 time in hunting for it, they moved along hungry and sulky, 

 the theme of conversation being the well -remembered 

 merits of good buffalo-meat, of " fat fleece," " hump-rib," 

 and " tender loin ; " of delicious " boudins," and marrow- 

 bones too good to think of. La Bonte had never seen the 

 lordly animal, and consequently but half believed the ac- 

 counts of the mountaineers, who described their countless 

 bands as covering the prairie far as the eye could reach, 

 and requiring days of travel to pass through ; but the 

 visions of such dainty and abundant feeding as they des- 

 canted on set his mouth watering, and danced before his 

 eyes as he slept supperless, night after night, on the banks 

 of the hungry Platte. 



One morning he had packed his animals before the rest, 

 and was riding a mile in advance of the party, when he 

 saw on one side the trail, looming in the refracted glare 

 which mirages the plains, three large dark objects without 

 shape or form, which rose and fell in the exaggerated light 



