the lungs--the true mark in shooting buffalo.

The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying our horses
to the horns of the victims, Henry began the bloody work of dissection,
slashing away with the science of a connoisseur, while I vainly
endeavored to imitate him. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror and
indignation when I endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of raw
hide, always carried for this purpose, dangling at the back of the
saddle. After some difficulty we overcame his scruples; and heavily
burdened with the more eligible portions of the buffalo, we set out on
our return. Scarcely had we emerged from the labyrinth of gorges and
ravines, and issued upon the open prairie, when the pricking sleet came
driving, gust upon gust, directly in our faces. It was strangely
dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The freezing storm soon
penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of our heavy-gaited horses
kept us warm enough, as we forced them unwillingly in the teeth of the
sleet and rain, by the powerful suasion of our Indian whips. The prairie
in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs
had burrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of
fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in
a cornfield; but not a yelp was to be heard; not the nose of a single
citizen was visible; all had retired to the depths of their burrows,
and we envied them their dry and comfortable habitations. An hour's
hard riding showed us our tent dimly looming through the storm, one
side puffed out by the force of the wind, and the other collapsed in
proportion, while the disconsolate horses stood shivering close around,
and the wind kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of three old
half-dead trees above. Shaw, like a patriarch, sat on his saddle in the
entrance, with a pipe in his mouth, and his arms folded, contemplating,
with cool satisfaction, the piles of meat that we flung on the ground