THE BUFFALO


Four days on the Platte, and yet no buffalo! Last year's signs of them
were provokingly abundant; and wood being extremely scarce, we found an
admirable substitute in bois de vache, which burns exactly like peat,
producing no unpleasant effects. The wagons one morning had left the
camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still
sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire, playing pensively with
the lock of his rifle, while his sturdy Wyandotte pony stood quietly
behind him, looking over his head. At last he got up, patted the neck of
the pony (whom, from an exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had
christened "Five Hundred Dollar"), and then mounted with a melancholy
air.

"What is it, Henry?"

"Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder
over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black--all black with
buffalo!"

In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope; until
at the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall white wagons
and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so slowly
advancing that they seemed motionless; and far on the left rose the
broken line of scorched, desolate sand-hills. The vast plain waved with
tall rank grass that swept our horses' bellies; it swayed to and fro in
billows with the light breeze, and far and near antelope and wolves were
moving through it, the hairy backs of the latter alternately appearing