"Thin how can we ivver induce th' bastes to sit fer their photygrafs?"
"We'll have to get on the other side of them, and creep up behind that small clump of timber."
"It will take an hour to get round there, me b'y."
"All of that; but I shall be well repaid if I can obtain a picture of some real wild buffalo. What a sight it must have been to behold one of those immense herds which once covered the plains 'from horizon to horizon,' as we are told. Now it is a known fact that there are less than fifty wild buffaloes in existence. A little more than fifteen years ago it was said that about three hundred thousand Indians subsisted almost entirely on the flesh of the buffalo."
"An' is thot roight?"
"It is right, Barney. The hide-hunter has destroyed the buffalo. The creatures were slaughtered by thousands, stripped of their hides, and their carcasses left to rot and make food for wolves and vultures."
"An' wur there no law to stop th' killin' av thim?"
"No. If there had been, it could not have been enforced on the great plains. The railroad, civilization, and the white man's lust for killing, which he calls sport, doomed the buffalo.
"But this is not getting a picture of 'real wild buffalo.' I have pictures of Golden Gate Pass, Fire Hole Basin, Union Geysers, and almost everything else but wild buffalo, and I have vowed I would not leave the park till I had one of the latter. Come on."
He backed from the crest of the ridge and down the slope, Barney following. In a few moments the boys could rise to their feet and make their way along.