TEN DAYS IN MONTANA. 151 



alongside of and around them, firing their revolvers in the 

 air and shouting, the infuriated animals refuse to change their 

 course, and in a few minutes are miles away. And thus ends 

 our first set-to with the buffalo. 



The reader will justly wonder that we did not kill more of 

 them, that we allowed any of them to escape. We, who had 

 never before hunted buffaloes, were at first surprised our- 

 selves ; but when we remembered what we had read and been 

 told about the amount of shooting necessary to bring down a 

 buffalo, we marveled no longer. Subsequent experience 

 proved that it takes, on an average, five to ten bullets to stop 

 one within a reasonable distance, depending on the portion of 

 the body through which the balls pass. Of course, one ball 

 through almost any part of the trunk of the animal will cause 

 death eventually, but the great amount of vitality he possesses 

 will enable him to travel miles ere he succumbs. That we 

 did not kill the others dead in their tracks was not owing to 

 bad shooting. We could plainly hear our bullets strike the 

 animals, and see them flinch as they felt the effect of the shot. 

 The soldiers who pursued them said they saw blood streaming 

 from every one of them when riding within a few feet of them, 

 and they had no doubt but that every one of them would die 

 before night. 



The one we secured had nine bullet holes in him, and the 

 majority of the balls had passed entirely through him, which 

 fact spoke highly of the hard-hitting qualities of our Sharp's 

 and Springfield rifles. The reader will pardon me for digress- 

 ing here to state for the information of those concerned, that 

 a large majority of the frontiersmen I met with in fact, 

 nearly all of them used Sharp's rifles. I saw probably a 

 hundred of these in my travels, and only three or four of any 

 other kind. I questioned a great many of the men who use 

 them, as to their effectiveness and adaptation to frontier use, 



