SOX 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Ajpsxl IQ, IQQ2, 
Through the Parsonage Window. 
XII. — Indians 1 Buffalo 1 
We had been four days out and were sharply on the 
wat*h for buffalo, but as yet had sighted none. It was 
not expected we should see any between the Republican 
and Arkansas Rivers, but now that we had turned south 
and crossed the Arkansas, something might be looked 
for beyond each rise of ground or in any dip of "draw or 
-valley. We had seen the first fresh sign at the crossing 
of the river — a track not more than a month old. Signs 
in the form of old trails could be encountered anywhere 
in the country we had been Traversing, but these old 
trails were deeply worn and remained a characteristic of 
the country long years after the last buffalo had departed. 
It was late in the afternoon of the fifth day, when, 
rising a low ridge overlooking a small creek and the 
valley beyond, we sighted two dark objects on the hill- 
side just opposite. Two of us were walking ahead, as 
was our custom, and motioned for the team to stop while 
we had a closer inspection. The objects were doubtless 
buffalo, and by going round a quarter-mile we could cross 
the main ridge at the head of a small draw which 
slanted down past the supposed buffalo to the creek. 
Motioning our teamster to remain hidden below the brow, 
of the ridge, we went back and crossed into the draw and 
followed ©n down till we thought we were opposite the 
buffalo again, and then crept to the top of the ridge and 
looked over. There were the two objects; but they were 
ponies and dragged lariats. "White or red?" That was 
the question we asked each other, expecting no answer. 
But an answer came, notwithstanding. As we watched 
two Indians came out of the concealment of a fringe of 
willows along the creek, and mounting the ponies, rode 
back to the creek again and under the brow of the hill 
out of sight. Looking carefully, we thought we could 
see the top of a teepee down among the willows, but were 
not sure. Back we went up the draw, as carefully as 
we had come down, a little ashamed of the retreat, but 
determined to be on the safe side. We had the drop and 
meant to keep it if we could. 
The expectant countenance of our friend changed woe- 
fully when we announced the result of our scout. We 
had driven a long way without water, and must have 
some from the creek. So we kept on up the ridge, well 
under the brow out of sight, for a couple of miles, and 
then turned into it. We struck the very last pool at the 
head of the stream, watered our stock, filled our keg and 
then pulled out for the divide on the other side. In 
going up we followed the bottom of a draw, as opposed 
to our custom of following the divide between the draws. 
When we had nearly reached the summit and while the 
ridge on either side was still high enough to conceal our 
team, we unharnessed and picketed our horses. Just, 
there we should halt until we learned what had become 
of those Indians. 
When we started out I had been an humble camp fol- 
lower, but now it dawned upon me that I was dictating 
the entire policy, and the old-timers were following my 
lead without demur. Back at the settlements they had 
laughed at me as a tenderfoot, and read me sarcastic 
lectures as to the right method of doing things'; now 
all was changed. "How shall this be? What shall I 
do?" were the questions on which I was expected to pass 
judgment. I smiled as I noted this, but knew that when 
we reached the haunts of man again my light would go 
out before the blazing ego of the others. Nevertheless, 
while we remained on the range I was the virtual, if not 
acknowledged, leader. 
Just above our team was a ledge of rock that cropped 
out almost at the summit of the ridge. From behind 
this ledge I could see the whole course of the ravine up 
which we had come, and also sweep with my eye any of 
the three ridges which hemmed us in. I smiled again 
as I noted this, and felt that if the Indians wished to 
initiate a fuss with us it would be a pleasing diversion. 
Our camp was completely concealed from all directions 
and_ I did not believe we had been discovered by the 
Indians; we were out of the line of travel, even of the 
buffalo, yet I determined to keep watch the first part 
of the night, and walking up to the ledge I lay down 
beside it. = The secret of a good fighter is, "Get the drop 
and keep it as long as there is doubt ; if ~our man proves 
to be an enemy, shoot quick." This "was Wild Bill's 
way, and if all reports are true, the shoo&ng was often 
mere wanton murder un<*~ the guise of faff fight When 
it came his turn to go he went by the same road he had 
sent so many others. 
Another thing which rendered us secure against sur- 
prise was our dog. He was a Newfoundland, and not 
much more than a year old. He was every one's friend 
and nobody s enemy, yet I believe he did not like Indians 
very well. He was very acute of ear. and it was next to 
impossible for man or horse to get near camp without 
his hearing them. At all he would bark savagely as long 
as he could only hear and not see them. He would not 
bite any one, and after barking until they came in sight 
had often gone out and escorted strangers into camp with 
a wagging tail. This was his strong point. He never 
bred animosities, and never barked at anything but man 
or horse. These were all we feared. White or red we 
never wanted men around, unless we had a line on their 
doings A horse was sure to be carrying a man ; and 
Colonel never barked at anything else. Wolves might 
howl all around the camp; he never paid the slightest 
attent-on to them. Had he barked at everything he would 
have been a nuisance; as it was, he was the best watch- 
dog I ever saw. He gave a sure warning, and left his 
master to do the rest. At one time he barked persistent- 
ly, and I went up to the top of the lookout hill, which 
commanded most of the surrounding country, but could 
drover no one. I then got a switch and ordered him to 
Hush ! but though he cowered and looked wistfully at 
me. he refused to keep still, and continued to bark at 
intervals % thought, certain, that Colonel had gone 
wrong that time but when, half an hour later, a caravan 
roJ ed mto sight, he was vindicated. After that what 
Colonel said went; if he barked, some one was coming, 
and no questions asked, and so far as I know he never 
made a mistake. With Colonel lying beside me in the 
shadow of the ledge and a bright moon lighting up the 
prairie in all directions, I felt that surprise was an 
impossibility, and at length got a blanket and went to 
sleep, leaving everything to Colonel's nose and ears, even 
as 1?he others had left all to me. Poor old Colonel ! I 
have missed him more than any other of my companions 
of the range. 
I awoke sometime during the latter part of the night, 
and did not allow myself to go to sleep again, but from 
that time until the sun rose over the plains kept a close 
watch from the ledge. Nothing occurred, however, to 
rouse my suspicion, and I woke my partners from a 
sound sleep to keep guard while I went on a scout_ to 
try to discover what the redskins were doing. Following 
along down the-ridge and keeping well under over the 
brow from the enemy's side, until I thought I was about 
opposite their camp, I lay flat down, crept to the top and 
peered through a bunch of grass into- the valley. I 
could see where the grass had been trampled down on 
the creek bank at the margin of a willow thicket, and a 
couple of abandoned lodge poles lay near; but the In- 
dians were gone. Following on down the stream with 
my eye, I saw several thin films of smoke "rising. Wan- 
dering along a distant slope, my somewhat startled gaze 
fell upon a long thin line winding away up the hill- 
side, like a column of ants marching in single file. In- 
dians ! and lots of them. At the head was a long line 
of horsemen, and then came squaws on foot, driving 
ponies harnessed between two long poles, the rear ends 
of which dragged on the ground. On these were lashed 
various kinds of duffle. I watched them until they dis- 
appeared over the divide several miles away, thankful that 
they had taken a course nearly opposite to ours. When 
I returned to camp I simply said I had seen the Indians 
go and made no mention of their great number, being 
fearful of a back-track movement. We stayed in camp 
all day and kept a careful watch, going twice to the 
creek for water, but saw nothing suspicious. 
Next morning we again took up the line of march to- 
ward the southwest. As we traveled on across the hills 
I fell to speculating on the* probability of our falling in 
with other bands of Indians. It was not likely that any 
of them would bother us unless they caught us at a de- 
cided disadvantage, of which, however, being on the 
move as we were, there was some chance. The In- 
dians of the Southwest were never strong on stubborn 
fighting.. They did most of their work of the sort with 
whoop and hurrah, and with overwhelming numbers and 
advantages on their side. If the other party got in the 
first whoop they were likely to be cowed. It was this 
quality which gave Custer, with his dash, such success in 
his campaigns against them, and it was this success which 
led him to think he could do the same thing with the 
Sioux, which resulted in the terrible disaster on the 
Little Big Horn. 
Judging the future by the past is a mistake in any 
line. Men who have played safe games for years are 
likely to go "up against it" some time, full of confidence, 
only to find it has been "braced" from all sides. New 
conditions are constantly coming up, and new schemes 
evolved. The red paint and glitter of yesterday are not 
sure to catch the crowd to-morrow. Pomp and plumes 
are all in a circus parade, or even at an inauguration, but 
have no place in real war, and generally disappear with 
the army officer of peace times, who has received most 
of his training in the ball room. Custer's mistake con- 
sisted in having made a bluff and won, supposing he 
could do the same thing again. Disregarding the counsel 
of his scouts, he charged headlong into a stone wall, sim- 
ply because the red granite of other times had proved 
to be only red paint on tissue paper. When it came to a 
show-down, his weak hand of inferior numbers and raw 
recruits was badly beaten. A good rule in the game of 
life is, "Don't bluff all the time"— but this was to be 
a tale of a buffalo hunt. 
I remember I was filled with exultation as we traveled 
along that morning. We had bested the Indians in the 
first round; the morning was grandly beautiful, with a 
soft south wind, and I was brim-full of health and vigor; 
the realization of a long-cherished dream was just be- 
yond some of those hills. The realization of dreams is 
always just over a hill, never on our side, but this dream 
of mine was above the average, and its fulfilment was 
really there. The chirp of a cricket, the chitter of a lark, 
was music for me ; it was about all the music nature pro- 
vided for any one in that country, unless indeed it might 
have been the howl of a wolf at night. A magpie that 
sprang from its perch on a bleaching skeleton and rose 
fifty feet in the air, where it hovered and chattered for 
a few seconds and then dropped back to the identical 
spot it sprang from, seemed the happiest thing alive. 
Where the country was rough, so that we could not 
see far ahead, I rode in advance on the extra pony, keep- 
ing from a quarter to a half-mile to the fore. Where we 
had high divide ridges to cross, I rode to the top, even 
further to the front, and surveyed the country, while the 
wagon was coming up. Topping one of these divides 
just before noon, a panorama was unrolled, the thrill of 
seeing which abides with me still. There was a wide 
valley, in the center of which was a shallow basin of 
water extending over several thousand acres. I almost 
unconsciously noted that there were great dark patches 
of ducks and geese, and great white patches of swans and 
wavies. but the thrill came from the black specks that 
dotted hillside and level to the south and west. Buffalo! 
I had tried to imagine my first sight of the great beast 
ever since first starting out, but I never dreamed of 
anything so grand as this. The herd extended for 
miles up the valley, from mere flecks like flies in the 
distance, to one old bull three hundred yards away, that 
looked as large as a haystack. I motioned my comrades 
to leave the team and come up, which they slowly and 
cautiously did, half-expecting another Indian camp. Their 
faces had a haunted look as they came slowly to the 
top, but after, they had taken a survey of the valley, the 
troubled expression left them in a moment, and Ego 
was king. 
"Poor Darby!" said Nathan ; "wasn't you afraid setting 
up here with that old bull so close? If he'd got his eye 
on you, you'd have been a goner." 
That was a joke on me. The buffalo were feeding 
toward the hills to the west, and as yet were too far 
from the breaks to admit of our getting a shot. The? 
only feasible plan seemed to be to wait until they got* 
within easy range of the hills, and then by going round'! 
to the west and coming to the top again, the advantaged 
would be ours. But I was temporarily deposed as leader!' 
of the- expedition. Nathan was a famous buffalo hunter,.;! 
having been on the range several times before, and Pete ) 
was not without his meed of honor, having once run aj 
buffalo down and killed it. In this race Pete had been , 
ahead with the Spencer carbine tucked under his arm 
pointing to the rear. He was pumping up lead and ; 
throwing it backward at random, while the bull was 
behind, reaching frantically for his coat tails. But the 
bull never got within reaching distance of his coat tails, 
even with the tips of his horns, and at length gave it up 
in disgust and lay down and died. Pete explained this 
, by saying he had previously shot and wounded the 
buffalo, which had dropped in its tracks, and supposing 
it dead, he had walked up to it, when it got up suddenly 
and charged him. He said he might have shot it, but 
wanted to see if he could run it down; he had only 
pumped lead under his arm to aggravate and keep it 
coming, and that it had finally given up. Pete's nearest 
and dearest friends told a different story. They said 
there was no sign of a bullet mark on the bull, but that 
it had simply got. dizzy at the whizz of Peter's legs, as he 
tossed yawning gaps of space behind, and fell and broke 
its neck. This was as joke on Pete, and shows why his- 
tory comes to be so unreliable a mess of flattery and 
detraction. Here were two eye-witnesses to the' same 
event who told widely divergent stories. The biggest 
coward yearns to be a hero in the eyes of his fellows ; 
the bigger the coward the bigger the yearn. The man 
who really does things has no time to prove 'or disap- 
prove statements, and the fellow who has nothing to do 
but talk usually gets his stories to the fore. 
The others laughed at my suggestions as to how to 
get at the buffalo and said the right way was to break 
the big bull down and get a stand ; that is, to break his 
spine without killing him, and his bellowing would draw 
the whole herd to his assistance, when we could shoot 
enough to make a load. The theory was all right, but 
the practice was bad. Aside from this, the bull would 
weigh nearly a ton, and would make a load for any 
team over the unbroken prairie. To this end they drew 
bead on the' bull, while I was left to get everything 
ready for the inrush of the scattered herd. 
"Get the skinning knives and whetstones out of the 
wagon," was the order they gave as they stretched them- 
selves on the ground to take aim; but I waited to see 
what was going to happen. One of them over and the 
other under estimated the distance. A jet of powdered 
earth, like a puff of steam, a quarter of a mile be- 
yond the bull, and another jet half-way between showed 
where the huge slugs struck. Neither came within ten 
feet of the level of the bull. As the bull rolled off the 
hunters pumped lead at him with might and main. The 
old fellow did not seem to be traveling fast, but I noted 
that the shots all fell to the rear of him ; over and under, 
but always far to the rear. A Spencer rifle ball was a 
slow traveler, hissing and sputtering through space like 
a skyrocket, and usually varied six to ten feet in tra- 
jectory at four hundred yards. 
As the rifles roared and belched, the dark specks in 
the further distance, one after another, began to roll 
away until everything in sight was on the move. It was 
a grand spectacle. Added to the uneven, rolling mass 
of buffalo, every wildfowl took wing and flecked the 
upper air as well. It was no ordinary flight of wild- 
fowl, but one among the greatest I have ever seen. As 
they rose and spread they seemed to fill the entire 
heavens with a moving mass of dotted lines. It was 
enough to make one dizzy, this turning and twisting 
above and rolling and tossing below. 
When the thrall of the splendid spectacle broke, I noted 
that the bull was still going, and our stand rapidly de- 
veloping into a stampede, with no chance of stopp ; ng it. 
I resolved to try one shot, though, and turned the old 
half-breed Sharps loose. I aimed high and well ahead, 
but the shot went nearly as wild as any of the others, as. 
indeed, the range was too great for anything more than 
a mere guess thrown into the immensity of space. The 
course of the buffalo was nearly at right angles to our 
position, and as I saw them approaching the breaks of 
the hills, I bethought me of the pony, and mounting I 
rode off at full speed, keeping behind the comb of the 
divide. I kept this up for nearly two miles, and then I 
the first buffalo appeared on the crest of the hill ahead. 
At this I dismounted, for I had no idea of shooting 
from horseback; it was hard enough work for me to 
keep that old half-breed twelve-pounder from beating 
the life out of my pony as we galloped along. Leaving 
the pony and creeping to the summit. I saw that the 
supreme moment was at hand. Most of the herd was 
still beyond, but the great bull the others had opened on 
was coming up the slope in a line that could bring him 
to the top of the divide only a hundred yards away. 
The bull paused on the crest just long enough for me 
to get a good bead. Almost before the smoke cleared I 
saw a crimson spot on his side just where I had thought 
was the proper place to aim. A sharp spat and seeming 
groan of despair from the bull told of the awful impact 
of the bullet on his ribs, and then he wheeled abruptly to 
the left and rolled away. Knowing I had hit fair I" sat 
still and watched, expecting him to fall at any mo- 
ment; but he held on his course, growing smaller and 
smaller until he disappeared, a mere speck in the dis- 
tance, over a hill more than a mile away. 
Then I mounted again and followed" after. When I 
reached the crest of the hill over which he had dis- 
appeared, I saw him lying at the brink of a pool of water 
in the gully at the foot. I noticed, too. several large, dead 
cottonwood trees and a number of smaller ones ; enough 
to furnish a camp in fuel all winter. A good place for 
an out-of-the-way winter camp. The bull was not dead, 
as I saw by a movement of the head, and getting off 
the pony I walked up to within ten steps of him and 
placed a second bullet at the butt of his ear. That settled 
it, and the head dropped, offering about as much re- 
sistance to the majestic force of that slug as a sheet of 
paper would to a common rifle ball. I skirted the margin 
of the pond and found the fine spring that fed it I 
also found it was only a small pond of about an acre in 
extent, with no outlet. Just the place, in fact, that I 
