jolting across the plains. Not far away other women were making
pemmican of fried buffalo meat and fat, pounded together and packed
with hot grease in skin bags. This food was a staple winter diet and
had too a market value for trade to the Hudson's Bay Company, which
shipped thousands of sacks yearly to its northern posts on the Peace
and the Mackenzie Rivers.

[Footnote 3: The Red River cart was a primitive two-wheeled affair,
made entirely of wood, without nails or metal tires. It was usually
drawn by an ox. (W.M.R.)]

The children and the sound of their laughter gave the camp a domestic
touch. Some of the brown, half-naked youngsters, their skins
glistening in the warm sun, were at work doing odd jobs. Others, too
young to fetch and carry, played with a litter of puppies or with a
wolf cub that had been caught and tamed.

The whole bustling scene was characteristic of time and place. A score
of such outfits, each with its Red River carts and its oxen, its dogs,
its women and children, traveled to the plains each spring to hunt
the bison. They killed thousands upon thousands of them, for it took
several animals to make a sack of pemmican weighing one hundred fifty
pounds. The waste was enormous, since only the choicest cuts of meat
were used.

Already the buffalo were diminishing in numbers. Vast hordes still
roamed the plains. They could be killed by scores and hundreds. But
the end was near. It had been several years since Colonel Dodge
reported that he had halted his party of railroad builders two days
to let a herd of over half a million bison pass. Such a sight was no