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.