198 THE OX AND ITS KINDRED 
the crisp buffalo-grass was plentiful and water good. 
They did not migrate in winter, but stubbornly faced 
the fiercest blizzards, relying for warmth on the hair 
matted thick upon their shoulders. While the buffalo 
was food and clothing and shelter for the Indian, the 
latter played no considerable part in the extinction 
of the species. The buffalo is a slow breeder, the 
cows dropping calves only once in two or three years, 
but the arrows of the Indians never diminished their 
number. The Indians were bold riders and good 
hunters, but they killed only to satisfy their own 
immediate wants. 
" The herds did not suffer greatly from the rifles 
of lithe early trappers and scouts who conducted 
wagon-trains across the plains to California. These 
men were famous shots and hunted on horseback 
in bold dashes on the herds, as the Indians hunted, 
but they had no way of reaching a market with hides 
and meat, and killed only to supply the immediate 
needs of the parties they were conducting. After 
the civil war, when Uncle Sam began to multiply his 
posts in the great West, some of the best of these 
plainsmen became hunters for the Government and 
buffalo-meat was an important part in army-rations 
out here. 
" We began to use breech-loaders about that time 
and the buffalo fell faster. I still have an old '48 
Springfield which I used when hunting for the rail- 
road construction gangs, and I suppose I must have 
killed 15,000 buffaloes with it. But it was the 
whistling of locomotives crawling farther and farther 
along the plains that sounded the doom of the bison. 
Even before the railroads were finished, the real at- 
tack on the herds began. The railroad-builders found 
