THE BATTLE OF THE BUFFALOES.
It was the afternoon of a day in early summer, along in 1859, when we found ourselves drifting in a boat down the Missouri. The morning broke with a drizzling rain, out of a night that had been tempestuous, with a fierce gale, heavy thunder, and unusually terrific lightning. Gradually the rain stopped, and we had gone but a short distance when the clouds broke away, the sun shone forth, and the earth appeared glistening with a new beauty. Ahead of us appeared, high up on the bluffs, a clump of trees and bushes.
As we drew near, a sudden caprice seized us, and shooting our boat up on the shelving bank, we secured it, and then climbed the steep embankment. We intended to knock around in the brush a little while, and then resume our trip. A fine specimen of an eagle caught our eye, perched high up on the dead bough of a tree.
Moving around to get a good position to pick him off with my rifle, so that his body would not be torn, I caught sight through an opening of the trees of an immense herd of buffaloes, browsing and moving slowly in our direction. We moved forward a little to get a better view of the herd, when the eagle, unaware to us, spread his pinions, and when we looked again for him he was soaring at a safe distance from our rifles.
We were on the leeward side of the herd, and so safe from discovery, if we took ordinary precaution, among the trees. It was a fine spectacle which they presented, and, what was more, we were in just the mood to watch them. The land undulated, but was covered for many acres with minute undulations of dark-brown shoulders slowly drifting toward us. We could hear the rasping sound which innumerable mouths made chopping the crisp grass. As we looked, our ears caught a low, faint, rhythmical sound, borne to us from afar.
We listened intently. The sound grew more distinct, until we could recognize the tread of another herd of buffaloes coming from an opposite direction.
We skulked low through the undergrowth, and came to the edge of the wooded patch just in time to see the van of this new herd surmounting a hill. The herd was evidently spending its force, having already run for miles. It came with a lessening speed, until it settled down to a comfortable walk.
About the same time the two herds discovered each other. Our herd was at first a little startled, but after a brief inspection of the approaching mass, the work of clipping the grass of the prairies was resumed. The fresh arrivals came to a standstill, and gazed at the thousands of their fellows, who evidently had preëmpted their grazing grounds. Apparently they reached the conclusion that that region was common property, for they soon lowered their heads and began to shave the face of the earth of its green growths.
The space separating the herds slowly lessened. The outermost fringes touched but a short distance from our point of observation. It was not like the fringes of a lady's dress coming in contact with the lace drapery of a window, I can assure you. Nothing so soft and sibilant as that. It was more like the fringes of freight engines coming in contact with each other when they approach with some momentum on the same track.
The powerful bulls had unwittingly found themselves in close proximity to each other, coming from either herd. Suddenly shooting up from the sides of the one whose herd was on the ground first, flumes of dirt made graceful curves in the air. They were the signals for hostilities to commence. The hoofs of the powerful beast were assisted by his small horns, which dug the sod and tossed bunches that settled out of the air in his shaggy mane.
These belligerent demonstrations were responded to in quite as defiant a fashion by the late arrival. He, too, was an enormous affair. We noticed his unusual proportions of head. But his shoulders, with their great manes, were worth displaying to excite admiration and awe at their possibilities, if they could do nothing more.
Unquestionably the two fellows regarded themselves as representative of their different herds, the one first on the ground viewing the other as an interloper, and he in his turn looking upon the former as reigning, because no one had the spirit to contest his supremacy and show him where he belonged. They sidled up near each other, their heads all the while kept low to the ground, and their eyes red with anger and rolling in fiery fury. This display of the preliminaries of battle drew the attention of an increasing number from either herd. At first they would look up, then recommence their eating, and then direct their attention more intensely as the combatants began to measure their strength more closely. And when the fight was on they became quite absorbed in the varying fortunes of the struggle.
At last the two huge fellows, after a good deal of circumlocution, made the grand rush. I reckon it would be your everlasting fortune if one of you college fellows who play football had the force to make the great rush which either one of these animals presented. The collision was straight and square. A crash of horns, a heavy, dull thud of heads. We thought surely the skull of one or the other, or possibly both, was crushed in. But evidently they were not even hurt.
Didn't they push then? Well, I guess they did. The force would have shoved an old-fashioned barn from its foundations. The muscles swelled up on the thighs, the hoofs sank into the earth, but they were evenly matched.
For a moment there was a mutual cessation of hostilities to get breath. Then they came together with a more resounding crash than before. Instantly we perceived that the meeting of the heads was not square. The new champion had the best position. Like a flash he recognized it and redoubled his efforts to take its full advantage. The other appeared to quadruple his efforts to maintain himself in position, and his muscles bulged out, but his antagonist made a sudden move which wrenched his head still farther off the line, when he went down on his knees. That settled the contest, for his enemy was upon him before he could recover. He was thrown aside and his flank raked by several ugly upward thrusts of his foe, which left him torn and bruised, all in a heap. As quick as he could get on his feet he limped, crestfallen, away.
The victorious fellow lashed his small tail, tossed his head, and moved in all the pride of his contest up and down through the ranks of his adversary's herd. How exultant he was! We took it to be rank impudence, and though he had exhibited some heroic qualities of strength and daring, it displeased us to see him take on so many airs on account of his victory.
But his conquest of the field was not yet entirely complete. As he strode proudly along his progress was stopped by a loud snort, and, looking aside, he saw a fresh challenge. There, standing out in full view, was another bull, a monster of a fellow belonging to his late enemy's herd. He pawed the earth with great strokes and sent rockets of turf curving high in air, some of which sifted its fine soil down upon the nose of the victor.
As we looked at this new challenger and took in his immense form, we chuckled with the assurance that the haughty fellow would now have some decent humility imposed upon him. The conqueror himself must have been impressed with the formidableness of his new antagonist, for there was a change in his demeanor at once. Of course, according to a well-established buffalo code, he could do nothing but accept the challenge.
Space was cleared as the two monsters went through their gyrations, their tossings of earth, their lashings of tail, their snorts and their low bellows. This appeared to them a more serious contest than the former, if we could judge from the length of the introductory part. They took more time before they settled down to business. We were of the opinion that the delay was caused by the champion, who resorted to small arts to prolong the preliminaries. We watched it all with the most excited interest. It had all the thrilling features of a Spanish bull-fight without the latter's degradation of man. Here was the level of nature. Here the true buffalo instincts with their native temper were exhibiting themselves in the most emphatic and vigorous fashion. It was the buffalo's trial of nerve, strength, and skill. Numberless as must have been these tournaments, in which the champions of different herds met to decide which was superior, in the long ages during which the buffalo kingdom reigned supreme over the vast western prairies of the United States, yet few had ever been witnessed by man. We were looking upon a spectacle rare to human eyes, and I confess that I was never more excited than when this last trial reached its climax. It was a question now whether the champion should still hold his position. It stimulates one more when he thinks of losing what he has seized than when he thinks of failing to grasp that which he has never possessed. Undoubtedly both of these animals had this same feeling, for as we looked at this latest arrival, we about concluded that he was the real leader, and not the other that limped away vanquished.
While these and other thoughts were passing through our minds, the two mighty contestants squared and made a tremendous plunge for each other. What a shock was that! What a report rolled on the air! The earth fairly shook with the terrific concussion of buffalo brains, and both burly fellows went down on their knees. Both, too, were on their feet the same instant, and locked horns with the same swiftness and skill, and each bore down on the other with all the power he could summon. The cords stood out like great ropes on their necks; the muscles on thighs and hips rose like huge welts. We were quite near these fellows and could see the roll of their blood-red fiery eyes. They braced and shoved with perfectly terrible force. The froth began to drip in long strings from their mouths. The erstwhile victor slipped with one hind foot slightly. His antagonist felt it and instantly swung a couple of inches forward, which raised the unfortunate buffalo's back, and we expected every instant that he would go down. But he had a firm hold and he swung his antagonist back to his former position, where they were both held panting, their tongues lolling out.
There was a slight relaxation for breath, then the contest was renewed. Deep into the new sod their hoofs sunk, neither getting the advantage of the other. Like a crack of a tree broken asunder came a report on the air, and one of the legs of the first fighter sank into the earth. The other buffalo thought he saw his chance, and made a furious lunge toward his opponent. The earth trembled beneath us. The monsters there fighting began to reel. We beheld an awful rent in the sod. For an instant the ground swayed, then nearly an acre dropped out of sight.
We started back with horror, then becoming reassured, we slowly approached the brink of the new precipice and looked over. This battle of the buffaloes had been fought near the edge of this high bluff. Their great weight—each one was over a ton—and their tremendous struggles had loosened the fibers which kept the upper part of the bluff together, and the foundations having been undermined by the current, all were precipitated far below.
As we gazed downward we detected two moving masses quite a distance apart, and soon the shaggy fronts of these buffaloes were seen. One got into the current of the river and was swept down stream. The other soon was caught by the tides and swept onward toward his foe. Probably they resumed the contest when, after gaining a good footing farther down the banks of the Missouri, they were fully rested.
But more probably, if they were sensible animals, and in some respects buffaloes have good sense, they concluded after such a providential interference in their terrific fight that they should live together in fraternal amity. So, no doubt, on the lower waters of the Missouri two splendid buffaloes have been seen by later hunters paying each other mutual respect, and standing on a perfect equality as chief leaders of a great herd.