The Last of the Buffalo 



and driving the feathered shaft deep 

 through the bodies of the buffalo. Re- 

 turning on their tracks, they skin the dead, 

 then load meat and robes on their horses, 

 and with laughter and jest ride away. 



After them, on the deserted prairie, 

 come the wolves to tear at the carcasses. 

 The rain and the snow wash the blood 

 from the bones, and fade and bleach the 

 hair. For a few months the skeleton holds 

 together; then it falls down, and the fox 

 and the badger pull about the whitening 

 bones, and scatter them over the plain. In 

 some such way came the bones of this 

 cow and this bull of mine on the prairie 

 where I found them, and picked them up 

 to keep as mementoes of the past, to dream 

 over, and in such revery to see again the 

 swelling hosts which yesterday covered the 

 plains, and to-day are but a dream. 



So the buffalo passed into history. Once 

 an inhabitant of this continent from the 

 Arctic slope to Mexico and from Vir- 

 ginia to Oregon, and within the memory 

 of men yet young roaming the plains in 

 such numbers that it seemed that it could 

 never be exterminated, it has now disap- 

 peared as utterly as has the bison from 

 Europe. For it is probable that the ex- 

 isting herds of that practically extinct spe- 



204 



