April 27, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
527 
Across the Plains in Early Days 
By SAMUEL MANSFIELD STONE 
(Continued from last week.) 
D ay followed day in the same dreary routine, 
and I began to wonder why the timber of 
the Arkansas Valley did not loom up on 
the horizon. I was positive that I must have 
traversed double the 200 miles that the Indian 
agents assured me intervened between the course 
of our route and the river. I felt certain that I 
of water save that the quality was uniformly vile. 
Daily, and sometimes two or three times in a 
day, I encountered creeks and rivers with an 
abundance of liquid, which, for want of any¬ 
thing better, had to do service for water. When¬ 
ever the banks were sufficiently sloping to admit 
of it, I would dig a miniature well a few feet 
forced upon me. Encouraged by that lucky shot 
1 made numerous attempts to duplicate it, but 
from that day to this I have never been fortu¬ 
nate enough to do so. Hence I have come to 
believe that the circumstances which rendered 
possible the killing of that one unfortunate ani¬ 
mal were such as are unlikely to occur more 
than once in a man’s life time.* I have since 
read statements of English hunters to the effect 
that they bagged certain jacks with other game 
on their hunting expeditions, but I have never 
conversed with a man who had the temerity to 
say that he had shot one, though he might tell 
of such shooting by others. 
had maintaineda southwest course, as directed, 
and concluded that my information had been mis¬ 
taken as to the distance. Former experience with 
natives of the plain taught me that opinions re¬ 
garding the length of a ile varied as widely as 
individual characteristics. 
“How far to Paola?” I one day asked a settler. 
“Jest four mile an’ a half, by Guv’ment sur¬ 
vey,” was the reply, in positive tones. After 
riding an hour and covering at the least calcula¬ 
tion four miles, I hurled the question aj another 
native. 
“Wal, it’s a right smart stretch over five mile, 
’cordin’ to the fellers ’t laid out th’ quarter-sec¬ 
tions,” was the equally positive assurance, and 
I rode at least five miles further before reaching 
my objective point. 
I experienced no further suffering through lack 
from the natural brink which would quickly fill 
with a much clearer fluid than the sluggish, 
muddy stream afforded. Though its taste did 
not differ materially from the other, I could 
swallow it without gagging. 
Having acquired facility with my revolver I 
often supplemented my store of hard biscuit and 
jerked beef with bird meat. Fuel was abundant. 
The ground was thickly strewn with buffalo chips 
which burned freely with very little flame and 
prodigious smoke, but gave out sufficient heat for 
broiling by holding the bird close to the fire. 
T had been led to believe that it was a prac¬ 
tical impossibility to get within rifle range of 
a jack rabbit. In the first flush of success after 
killing my first specimen, I was inclined to lay 
the inability to the clumsiness of the hunter, but 
subsequently the truth of the information was 
The good book declares that it is not good 
for man to be alone. The first appreciable effect 
of the continued solitude of the plains upon me 
was an almost overwhelming sense of the mag¬ 
nitude of space and the infinitesimal insignifi¬ 
cance of myself. Riding along under the vast 
■"This is an excellent illustration of the fallacy of 
basing a belief on the experience of one observer. We 
ourselves have shot scores of jackrabbits with the rifie 
not r-any miles southwest of the region referred to by 
Jlr. Stone; and one now and then with the heavy six- 
shooters of the early ’80s. It was then common to see 
jackrabbits sitting up, offering easy marks, at distances 
of thirty to one hundred yards. A cowboy, accounted a 
fair shct, killed two in our presence one day, both snap 
shots, with a .45 Colt, and both under fifteen yards. 
But there was abundant food for coyotes, wolves and 
foxes there, and the jackrabbits were not wild—a con¬ 
dition that probably did not apply to the region dc- 
scribea by Mr. Stone.— Editor. 
