AT THE PAINTED WOODS 134 
riding through the country was seldom out of sight of 
a band or two of these animals. On the west side, 
especially about the Square Buttes—from any elevated 
point the observer could often count from twenty to 
fifty separate bands of the antelope feeding as con- 
tentedly as sheep on the green grass during the months 
of May andJune. Later in the season they moved back 
rom the river and made their winter quarters in and 
among the bad lands of the Little Missouri country. 
In the summer months of 1872 and 1873, Lonesome 
Charley Reynolds made the Square Buttes his camping 
place, at which point he slaughtered hundreds of the 
antelope and sun dried the meat—finding a market with 
the traders at Fort Berthold. 
In August 1873 Frank Wambole formerly of Yankton 
and who closed his days in the insane asylum there,— 
was my only companion. One day he took his gun and 
went to the prairies, as he expressed it, ‘‘to take obser- 
vation.” A short time after our three ponies came tear- 
ing in around the stockade snorting wildly, and with 
uplifted tails. Soon after came Wambole, breathless 
almost, and on the jump, excitedly exclaiming: 
«‘Get your gun quick—a war party—get your gun!’’ 
Doing as bid and after an hour of heart-thumping 
waiting we ventured out on an armed reconnoisance. 
We first discovered some broken juneberry and cherry 
bushes, then immense tracks of two huge cinnamons. 
It was a war party of hungry bears. 
One October evening in the same year, the writer took 
a bull-boat from the Painted Woods landing and made 
a crossing of the Missouri opposite, for the purpose of 
getting a deer from the plentiful band near the mouth of 
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