1 48 The King of the Thundering Herd 



could he have seen the landscape as a whole, 

 for six or eight hundred miles to the north- 

 west and the north ? What would he have 

 said if you had told him that he could have 

 traveled for two months more, away up 

 through the Dakotas into what is now 

 Montana, and almost to the Canadian border, 

 and that nearly every hillside in all that 

 distance would have been dotted with 

 buffalo ; that to the north through what is 

 now North Dakota, they were just as thick, 

 an innumerable host, like the trees in an 

 endless forest, always stretching on with 

 new vistas ahead, overwhelming in their 

 countless array ? If you had told him these 

 things, he might have been incredulous, 

 which would not have been strange, for old 

 hunters, who have pursued buffalo all their 

 lives, have been thunder-struck when they 

 have gone upon such an exploration as this. 

 One day on the fifth week of his journey 

 Bennie came to a rather large creek flowing 



