Dec. 26, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
1 011 
moments, and then caught one with his rope and 
mounted and began to drive them off. 
Now these horses were being herded by a 
captive Mexican boy who must have been lying 
down on his horse, for he was not seen. When 
the horses started, he must have slipped off his 
horse and a horse must have stepped on him, 
for Gentle Horse heard behind him a boy cry 
out as if in pain. Gentle Horse always declared 
that he made a great mistake when he did not 
go back and get the boy and make him help 
drive the horses. 
When Gentle Horse got to the meeting place 
all were there except Crow Chief and Man-on- 
the-Hill, and there were horses all about. They 
waited a little while for the two who were miss¬ 
ing, and then Pushing Ahead said, “We cannot 
wait longer for our friends. Something may 
have happened to them and we cannot risk the 
lives of others by remaining here.” They started 
and drove all night. During the night there came 
up a great rain which washed out their tracks. 
At daylight, as they were going along, they 
looked down the river and saw two men, each 
driving a bunch of horses. When these two 
men saw the others they changed their course 
a little so as to join them. The different 
bunches of horses were still being driven sepa¬ 
rately, so that each man might know his own 
horses when they were bunched up. Crow Chief 
and Man-on-the-Hill did not go to the meeting 
place at the buffalo wallow, but went to where 
the trail would cross the river. 
After they had come together the horses were 
bunched and driven faster. A man with a good 
horse was always left behind on a hill to watch 
the back trail. All that day they pushed hard 
and crossed the Arkansas at night, and there 
they stopped and rested the horses. When they 
had crossed the river they were all very tired. 
They went up on the divide above the river and 
spent the night there, and the leaders told each 
man to catch a fast horse and tie it up close 
to him. 
At daylight the next morning Crow Chief 
awoke them and said, “Come on. Let us go-” 
He advised them to walk for a while until they 
got limbered up, for they were very sore. About 
noon Crow Chief caught a horse and went on 
ahead and killed two buffalo. He and Man-on- 
the-Hill, who had not gone back to the meet¬ 
ing place, had lost their riding pads. They took 
off the hides from the shoulders of the buffalo, 
where the hair is thickest, and made riding pads 
from these and made stirrups of the rawhide. 
That night they stopped and camped here for 
a few days, doctoring themselves and greasing 
their sores and chafed spots with buffalo tallow. 
When they started again, most of the men still 
walked, but Crow Chief rode, for he was tire¬ 
less. He went ahead and killed two antelope, 
and giving one of them to Man-on-the-Hill, told 
him to spread it over his buffalo pad, and he 
would really have an easy saddle. They kept 
on north to the head of the Republican River, 
intending to wait there for a while. 
When they had left the Black Hills, the 
Cheyennes were intending to move south, cross¬ 
ing both the North Platte and South Platte 
rivers. One day, when Gentle Horse was out 
from the camp, he saw from the point of a hill 
two persons coming. Pie rode around among 
the hills closer to where he could get a better 
view, and after a little he saw that these two 
people were a Cheyenne man and woman, and 
from them he learned that the big camp was 
close at hand. So the war party reached the 
camp with their horses. 
3 1 
3C 
D 
z\ 
A 
Gray Squirrels in England. 
When Lord Northcliffe sailed for England 
last week at the close of his long visit to New¬ 
foundland and the United States, he took with 
him several robins and gray squirrels from the 
New York Zoological Gardens. These are to 
be liberated on his estates in England and the 
result carefully watched. 
As to the robins’ fate, time will tell, but the 
gray squirrels are likely to thrive as well as 
those that were turned out in Regents Park 
some years ago, and which have increased in 
numbers. 
At different times it has been reported that 
the employes in Regents Park have accused these 
American gray squirrels with having robbed 
birds’ nests. In other places in England, where 
our gray squirrels have been liberated, similar 
rumors are heard now and then, but the Field 
says naturalists who have watched the animals 
carefully deny the truth of the assertions. Gray 
squirrels sometimes destroy birds’ nests, though 
not nearly to the same extent as red squirrels. 
Certainly the gray squirrel has afforded amuse¬ 
ment to the children—and adults as well—wher¬ 
ever it has been placed in city parks, and it 
shows no inclination to quarrel with the birds 
which are also attracted when food is thrown 
to the squirrels. 
The latter add greatly to the value of parks. 
Their habits and amusing antics furnish enter¬ 
tainment to all who frequent these beautiful 
recreation grounds. They grow sufficiently tame 
to scramble over the persons of those they recog¬ 
nize "as friends, but never permit one to touch 
them. This habit often saves their lives, for 
attempts are frequently made by unscrupulous 
persons to catch and carry them away, either 
to kill them for food or confine them in cages. 
Certainly the squirrels in Central Park are killed 
now and then by foreigners, to whom all small 
fry represents food. The squirrels are tolled 
with nuts until close enough to be killed with 
canes or stones, then carried away. 
The small boy with his pea-shooter is also 
an enemy of the park squirrel, and it is interest¬ 
ing to see with what alacrity a squirrel will put 
distance between himself and a group of boys 
when the latter are skylarking. In Central Park 
three squirrels, each with an eye missing or 
blinded, were observed in one place on a winter 
day, due, possibly, to shot from small boys’ 
catapults. 
Why the Tail-Hold? 
Shasta Mountains, Cal., Dec. 5. —Editor 
Forest and Stream: I have always considered 
the skunk interesting, and I believe him to be 
worthy of attention as game. He is game not 
only in lying well to a dog and merely flushing 
his tail feathers, but he has a high game flavor 
which is readily detected. But why do so many 
of your correspondents glory in toting their 
skunks by the tail? When they desire to take 
their skunks along with them, going and com¬ 
ing, why not use a shawl strap, as one would 
in toting a pug or a poodle? A good strap with 
a hand hold is better than the tail, not being so 
humiliating to the skunk for one thing, and it 
is easier, enabling the carrier to swivel him about 
horizontally, instead of making him petulant and 
groggy while rotating vertically, wrong end up¬ 
permost. 
Being interested in skunk history, having met 
many of them more or less unexpectedly, I have 
followed the arguments which have appeared in 
these columns, but I fail to see the advantages 
of the tail hold. Of course any able-bodied per¬ 
son can carry a skunk by the tail, but I do not 
comprehend the desirability of inverting them 
in this manner when taking them along with you. 
In the recent article by Julian Burroughs, illus¬ 
trated by a picture showing John 'Burroughs 
amiably employing the tail hold—which the West 
Park skunk seems to enjoy—there is evidence 
that inclines me to think skunks in that part 
of New York have, by environment or other in¬ 
fluences, lost some of the typical attributes of 
the real three stripe species of the West. Out 
here skunks are not so demure and placable. 
When Mr. Burroughs writes of trying to shoo 
the skunk out of the hen house, snaring it, and 
keeping it in a barrel from where it was lifted 
and carried by the tail, I am almost assured the 
skunk has been Burbanked,* and is not, there¬ 
fore, a true specimen. 
If Mr. Burroughs can first ascertain that the 
wizard of the West has not intervened, and can 
convince me of the fact, I cannot even then 
promise to believe the tail hold so desirable as 
a shawl strap. I am too old a sportsman to carry 
either a gun or a skunk dangling vertically, with 
the muzzle—so to speak—dangerously direct. 1 
will still carry all firearms with a horizontal in¬ 
clination, with due consideration for myself, my 
friends and the enemy. Ransacker. 
"■Introduced in advance of the dictionaries. 
