288 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



be beyond our reach. The hunting-ground selected was the 

 country lying between the Rei)ublican and Solomon Rivers, 

 in Nebraska, to the westward of a line running south of old 

 Fort Kearney. 



Our party consisted of four men, with two teams of one 



span of horses each. M and his son E , a young 



man of some twenty years, were with one team, while 



Y and I drove another. All were tenderfeet except 



Y , who had been a night-herder with a wagon-train on 



the plains for years. Through lack of saddle-animals, all 



the hunting had to be done on foot. M and E 



brought small-bored, muzzlejoading rifles, in which they 



appeared to have great confidence. Y carried a Spencer 



carbine, with forty rounds of ammunition, while I was 

 armed with a Gallagher carbine, fifty-six caliber, using 

 forty grains of powder. These were the best arms obtainable 

 in our frontier settlement, and the choice of the most 

 utterly worthless gun in America appeared to lie between 

 the Spencer and the Gallagher. 



The point-blank range of the Gallagher was one hundred 

 yards, and while at fifty yards it would sling its bullet a 

 foot above the center of the target, at one hundred and fifty 

 yards the ball dropped a foot or more below. It was there- 

 fore necessary to get, if possible, within just one hundred 

 yards of the game. The Sj^encer appeared to have a some- 

 what flatter trajectory, judging from the few instances, 

 during the targeting of the carbines, when we found means 

 of ascertaining which way the balls really went; but 

 as its bullets did not seem to be at all partial to any 

 particular direction, all were well satisfied when at the 

 close of the hunt its forty rounds of ammunition had 

 actually killed two Buffaloes without crippling a single 

 hunter. 



Our road ran westward until, at a point on the Platte 

 River a few miles west of Fort Kearney, it turned south 

 toward the Republican River, distant some fifty miles, 

 where we forded the stream and camped on its right bank. 

 The hot weather compelled us to travel slowly, and the one 



