Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

When Pa told us that he had located a place where we could get all the wild African buffalo that we wanted, I thought of the pictures I had seen of the killing of buffaloes in America, where all the buffalo hunter had to do was to ride a horse after a herd of the animals, that couldn’t run faster than a yoke of oxen, pick out a big bull and ride alongside of him and fire bullets into his vital parts at about ten feet range, until his liver was filled full of holes and he had the nose bleed, and when he fell down from loss of blood, dismount and skin him for a lap robe. The American buffalo would always run away and the hunter could kill him if he had cartridges enough, and never be in any more danger than a farmer milking a cow.

I thought we would have about the same kind of experience with African buffalo, only we intended to lasso them and bring them to camp alive for the show business, but instead of the African buffalo running away from you, he runs at you on sight and tries to gouge out your inside works with his horns, and paws you with his hoofs, and when he gets you down he kneels down on you and runs horns all through your system and rolls over on your body like a setter dog rolling on an old dead fish.

The African buffalo certainly has a grouch, as though he had indigestion from eating cactus thorns, and when he sees a man his eyes blaze with fire and he gets as crazy as an anarchist and seems to combine in his make-up the habits of the hyena, the tiger, the man-eating shark and the Texas rattlesnake.

I wouldn’t want such an animal for a pet, but Pa said the way to get buffaloes was to go after them and never let up until you had them under your control. So we started out under Pa’s lead to capture African buffalo, and while the returns are not all in of the dead and wounded, we know that our expedition is pretty near used up.

These African buffaloes live in a marsh, where the grass and cane grows high above them, and the only way you can tell where they are is to watch the birds flying around and alighting on the backs of the animals to eat wood ticks and gnats. The marsh is so thick with weeds that a man cannot go into it, so we planned to start the airship on the windward side of the marsh, after lining up the whole force of helpers, negroes and white men, and building a corral of timber on the lee side of the marsh. Pa and the cowboy and I went in the airship, with those honk-honk horns they have on automobiles, and those megaphones that are used at football games, and Pa had a bunch of Roman candles to scare the buffaloes.

When the fence was done, which fifty men had worked on for a week, it run in the shape of a triangle or a fish net, with a big corral at the middle. Mr. Hagenbach sent up a rocket to notify Pa that he was ready to have him scare the buffaloes out of the marsh, down the fence into the corral.

Pa had the gas bag all full, a mile across the marsh, tied to a tree with a slip noose, so when we all got set he could pull a string and untie the slip noose.

Well, everything worked bully, and when Pa tied her loose we went up into the air about fifty feet, and Pa steered the thing up and down the marsh like a pointer dog ranging a field for chickens.

It was the greatest sight I ever witnessed, seeing more than two hundred buffalo heads raise up out of the tall grass and watch the airship, looking as savage as lions eating raw meat.

First they never moved at all, but we began to blow the honk horns, and then we yelled through the megaphones to “get out of there, you sawed off short horns,” and then they began to move away from the airship across the marsh, and we followed until they began to get into a herd, nearly on the other side of the marsh, but they only walked fast, splashing through the mud.