AND OTHER HUNTING ADVENTURES. 



233 



late in the night. The guards discovered them in 

 both instances, and fired on them, when they bea/t 

 a hasty retreat and disappeared in the darkness. It 

 was not known that their object was anything worse 

 than pilfering, and yet there was little doubt that 

 had they found the party all off guard and asleep, 

 a massacre would have resulted. But, true to their 

 aboriginal instincts, they did not wish to engage in 

 a fight with a formidable foe, whom they found ever 

 ready for such an emergency. 



PROWLERS. 



Such scenes and such sport as this party enjoyed 

 were common almost anywhere on the great plains, 

 west of the Missouri river up to a few years ago. 

 Herds of buffalo extending over a tract of land as 

 large as one of the New England States, and number- 

 ing hundreds of thousands of heads, might be found 

 any day in what was then " buffalo country." An 

 army officer told me that, when crossing the plains 

 in 1867 with a company of cavalry, he encountered 

 a herd that it took his command three days to ride 

 through, marching about thirty miles a day. 



When two of our transcontinental railways were 



