Dec. 3, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
889 
a sacre or enfant de garce, but suffering no cloud 
of ill humor to overshadow them but for a 
moment. While walking with a languid step, 
•cheering up their slow oxen, a song would burst 
•out from one end of the train to the other, pro¬ 
ducing a most charming effect.” 
The train was now approaching the buffalo 
range, and before long several buffalo were seen. 
Now, too, they had reached a country where 
“bois de vaches ”—buffalo chips—were used for 
fuel, and the collecting this was a part of the 
daily work after camp was made. More and 
-more buffalo were seen, and before long we 
hear of the plain literally covered with them, 
and now, as buffalo were killed more often, 
Garrard is introduced to a prairie dish which 
no one will ever eat again. He says: “The men 
the face and fired. Reloading, still in hot pur¬ 
suit (tough work to load on a full run), I fol¬ 
lowed, though without catching up. One feels 
a delightfully wild sensation when in pursuit of 
a band of buffalo on a fleet horse with a good 
rifle, and without a hat, the winds playing around 
the flushed brow, when with hair streaming, the 
rider nears the frightened herd, and with a shout 
of exultation discharges his rifle. I returned to 
the party highly gratified with my first, though 
unsuccessful chase, but Mr. St. Vrain put a 
slight damper to my ardor by simply remark¬ 
ing: 
“ ‘The next time you “run meat” don’t let the 
horse go in a trot and yourself in a gallop' (I 
had in my eagerness leaned forward in the 
saddle, and a stumble of the horse would have 
wagons, where the pursuer changed tack, only 
to be shot by one of the teamsters with a nor’- 
west fusil.” 
It is natural enough that the boy author, while 
traveling for the first time through the buffalo 
range, should think and write chiefly about buf¬ 
falo, yet he finds time to tell of the prairie dog 
towns through which they passed, and of the 
odd ways of the dog and the curious apparent 
companionship, or at least, cohabitation of the 
snakes and the prairie owls with them. As they 
passed through this-region, north of the Arkan¬ 
sas in the hot, dry weather of the early fall, they 
suffered sometimes from thirst. The first grave 
passed by the train aroused melancholy and 
sympathetic feelings in the boy's heart. 
One day Garrard went out hunting with Mr. 
RUNNING BUFFALOES IN THE FIFTIES. 
ate the liver raw, with a slight dash of gall by 
way of zest, which, served d la Indian, was not 
very tempting to cloyed appetites, but to hungry 
men, not at all squeamish, raw, warm liver, with 
raw marrow, was quite palatable. 
“It would not do,” he continues, “for small 
hunting parties to build fires to cook with, for 
in this hostile Indian country a smoke would 
bring inquiring friends. Speaking of hostile 
Indians reminds me of a question related by 
•one of our men. At a party, in a Missouri fron¬ 
tier settlement, a lady asked a mountaineer, fresh 
from the Platte, ‘if the hostile Indians are as 
■savage as those who serve on foot.’ 
“Returning to camp the prairie was black with 
the herds, and a good chance presenting itself, I 
struck spurs into Paint, directing him toward 
fourteen or fifteen of the nearest, distant eight 
or nine hundred yards. We (Paint and I) soon 
•neared them, giving me a flying view of their 
unwieldy proportions, and when within fifteen 
feet of the nearest I raised my rifle half way to 
pitched me over his head), by which well-timed 
and laconic advice I afterward profited.” 
From this time on there was much chasing of 
buffalo, but little killing of them, except by the 
old hands. The young ones, of course, neither 
knew how to shoot nor where to shoot, and our 
author naively remarks, after one of his chases: 
“To look at a buffalo one would think that they 
could not run with such rapidity, but let him try 
to follow with an ordinary horse and he is soon 
undeceived.” 
Among the efforts of the greenhorns to kill 
buffalo was the following incident: “Mr. Chad¬ 
wick (of St. Louis, on his first trip, like several 
of us, for pleasure), seeing a partially blind 
bull, concluded to ‘make meat’ of him. Crawl¬ 
ing up close, the buffalo scented him and pitched 
about every way, too blind to travel straight or 
fast. Chad fired; the mad animal, directed by 
the rifle report, charged. How they did ‘lick it’ 
over the ground, the pursued yelling, half in ex¬ 
citement, half in fear, till they were close to the 
St. Vrain and another, and a band of buffalo 
were discovered on their way to water. Here 
Garrard first found himself near to a wounded 
bull, and the picture that he paints of the mon¬ 
ster is a true and a striking one. “Mr. St. Vrain 
dismounting took his rifle and soon was on the 
‘approach,’ leaving us cached behind a rise of the 
ground to await the gun report. We laid down 
with our blankets, which we always carried strap¬ 
ped to the saddle, and with backs to the wind 
talked in a low tone, until hearing Mr. St. Vrain’s 
gun, when we remounted. Again and again the 
rifle was heard in hasty succession, and hasten¬ 
ing to him we found a fat cow stretched and a 
wounded male limping slowly off. The animals 
were tied to the horns of our cow, and with 
butcher knives we divested the body of its fine 
coat, but finding myself a ‘green hand,’ at least 
not an adept in the mysteries of prairie butcher¬ 
ing, I mounted Paint for the wounded fellow 
who had settled himself with his fore legs 
doubled under him 300 yards from us. Mine 
