44 The King of the Thundering Herd 



wholly inadequate to the demands made 

 upon it, especially if one wants to see all the 

 wild life upon the plains as Bennie did. 



Strangest of the features of the landscape 

 were the buttes, queer little hills rising 

 sharply from the plains to an altitude of 

 fifty to one hundred feet. Sometimes, in 

 the drier portions of the plains they were 

 quite barren, but in other places they were 

 rather luxuriant. Many of them showed 

 rock formation, and some were so fantastic as 

 to suggest that they had been made by man. 



Then there were the small canyons, great 

 cracks from ten to fifty feet wide, running 

 through the plains for miles. Their team 

 was often obliged to follow such a depression 

 for a long time before finding a place where 

 they could cross to the other side. Perhaps 

 there was a creek at the bottom of the 

 canyon, or maybe it was quite dry and 

 dusty. If the ravine was wooded and con- 

 tained water, it was called a coulee. 



