78 The Wilderness Hunter. 



it is so smoky that no one therein can stand upright. As 

 I drew rein the skin door was pushed aside, and the hard 

 old face and dried, battered body of the hunter appeared. 

 He greeted me with a surly nod, and a brief request to 

 "light and hev somethin' to eat"- the invariable proffer 

 of hospitality on the plains. He wore a greasy buckskin 

 shirt or tunic, and an odd cap of badger skin, from beneath 

 which strayed his tangled hair ; age, rheumatism, and the 

 many accidents and incredible fatigue, hardship, and ex- 

 posure of his past life had crippled him, yet he still pos- 

 sessed great power of endurance, and in his seamed 

 weather-scarred face his eyes burned fierce and piercing as 

 a hawk's. Ever since early manhood he had wandered 

 over the plains, hunting and trapping ; he had waged 

 savage private war against half the Indian tribes of the 

 north ; and he had wedded wives in each of the tribes of 

 the other half. A few years before this time the great 

 buffalo herds had vanished, and the once swarming beaver 

 had shared the same fate ; the innumerable horses and 

 horned stock of the cattlemen, and the daring rough riders 

 of the ranches, had supplanted alike the game and the red 

 and white wanderers who had followed it with such fierce 

 rivalry. When the change took place the old fellow, with 

 failing bodily powers, found his life-work over. He had 

 little taste for the career of the desperado, horse-thief, 

 highwayman, and man-killer, which not a few of the old 

 buffalo hunters adopted when their legitimate occupation 

 was gone ; he scorned still more the life of vicious and 

 idle semi-criminality led by others of his former com- 

 panions who were of weaker mould. Yet he could not do 



