CHAPTER X.
A BUFFALO STORY.
OMETIMES, instead of taking his rifle and accompanying the other hunters, Frank would borrow a shot-gun, and go out on foot and return with a good bag of prairie-fowl, birds resembling grouse. Occasionally, in the canyons, or wooded valleys, far away from the track, the hunters came across the trail of wild turkeys; then two of them would camp out for the night, and search under the trees until they saw the birds perched on the boughs above them, and would bring into camp in the morning half a dozen dangling from each of their saddles. Frequently, in their rides, they came across skunks, pretty black and white little animals. Frank was about to shoot the first he saw, but Peter, who was with him, shouted to him not to fire.
"It's a skunk," he said; "it ain't no use wasting your powder on that varmin. Why, if you were to kill him, and went to take it up, you wouldn't be fit to go into camp for a week; you would stink that bad no one couldn't come near you. They are wuss than pizen, skunks. Why, I have seen dogs sit up and howl with disgust after interfering with one of them. I don't say as they can't be eaten, cos the Indians eat them; and, for the matter of that, I have ate them myself. But they have to be killed plump dead, and then the stink-bag has to be cut out from them directly; but if you ain't hard pressed for food, I advise you to let skunks alone."
The first time that they came across a large herd of buffalo was a day Frank long remembered. He was out with the four hunters; they had just scampered to the top of one of the swells, when they simultaneously reined in their horses, for the valley—half a mile wide—in front of them was filled with a dark mass of moving animals, extending back for two or three miles.
"There, Frank," Abe said, "there is meat for you—enough for an army for months."