AMOS DECKER. 347 



who get it! A young friend at my elbow, who is fully 

 abreast of the current idioms of the day, says: "Yes, an' 

 they git it frequent, right where Alice wears her pearls." 



"Johnny," I asked, "what do you mean? What has 

 Alice and her pearls " 



"Why, they get it in the neck! See? Oh, I forget, 

 you wasn't alive last week. Say, that was a big scald on 



Senator in last week's Scalder. Did you see 



it?" 



This is the sort of interruption that comes to a man 

 who writes of old times when his surroundings are not 

 congenial. . After removing Johnny I tried to get back 

 by a jump of forty years from the present to the day when 

 the buffalo grazed from Oregon to Texas. 



On our way back to camp we saw a few solitary bulls, 

 and some time in the night there was an alarm that 

 turned us all out with our rifles ready for action. One 

 of the herders had gone off to the eastward, and struck 

 a small bunch of buffalo and had killed a calf. He had 

 brought the dressed carcass and the skin back, and had 

 stretched the latter between two trees just outside the 

 camp, and some wolves had torn it down and were fight- 

 ing over it. A few fire brands settled the dispute, and 

 the torn skin was brought in the corral in the interest of 

 harmony. 



The next morning was rainy, but the ponies had their 

 corn and we our buffalo veal, and off we went. In less 

 than an hour we saw the whole prairie covered with buf- 

 falo, grazing and going south. From a knoll the entire 

 earth seemed covered with them as far as we could see. 

 There might have been a million, or a hundred million, 

 or as many figures as you please to add to the guess. I 

 tell you in sober truth, and I ask you to believe me, I 

 don't know how many buffalo were in that herd. War- 



