“Things aint as they used to be, youngsters. I can ’member the time when thar was’nt a fence within miles of here, an’ a feller could go out an’ knock over a buffaler fur breakfast jest as easy as that farmer over thar could find one of his sheep. But the ax an’ plow have made bad work with a fine country, the buffaler an’ Injun have been pushed back t’wards the mountains, an’ it won’t be long afore thar’ll be no room fur sich as me; an’ we won’t be missed neither, ’cause when the buffaler an’ beaver are gone thar’ll be nothin’ fur us to do. These farms will keep pushin’ out all the while; an’ when folks, sittin’ in their snug houses beside their warm fires, hear tell of the Injuns that onst owned this country, nobody will ever think that sich fellers as me an’ Bill Lawson an’ ole Bob Kelly ever lived. If ole Bill was here now, he would say: ‘Let’s go back to the mountains, Dick, an’ stay thar.’ He wouldn’t like to see his ole huntin’ grounds wasted in this way, an’ I don’t want to see it neither. But I know that the Rocky Mountains an’ grizzly bars will last as long as I shall, an’ thar’ll be no need of trappers an’ hunters an’ guides arter that.”
Dick became silent after this, and it was not until the train halted for the noon’s rest, that he recovered his usual spirits.
[CHAPTER III.]
Antelope Hunting.
GRADUALLY the train left the improvements of civilization behind, and, at the end of three weeks, it was miles outside of a fence. Here the trapper was in his natural element. He felt, as he expressed, “like a young one jest out o’ school,” adding, that all he needed was “one glimpse of a Comanche or Cheyenne to make him feel perfectly nat’ral.”
In accordance with the promise he had made Frank before leaving St. Joseph, he now took Pete (that was the name the latter had given his horse) under his especial charge; and every morning, at the first peep of day, the boys saw him galloping over the prairie, firing his rifle as fast as he could reload, as if in pursuit of an imaginary herd of buffaloes. At first the spirited animal objected to this mode of treatment, and made the most desperate efforts to unseat his rider; but the trapper, who had broken more than one wild mustang, was perfectly at home on horseback, and, after a few exercises of this kind, Pete was turned over to his young master, with the assurance that he was ready to begin buffalo hunting. According to Frank’s idea, the animal had improved considerably under the trapper’s system of training, for he would hardly wait for his rider to be fairly in the saddle before he would start off at the top of his speed. The boys, who considered themselves fully able to do any thing that had ever been accomplished by any one else, having seen Dick load and fire his rifle while riding at full speed, began to imitate his example, and in a short time learned the art to perfection. In addition to this, each boy looked upon his horse as the better animal, and the emigrants were witnesses to many a race between them, in which Sleepy Sam, as Archie called his horse, always came off winner. But Frank kept up the contest, and at every possible opportunity the horses were “matched,” until they had learned their parts so well, that every time they found themselves together, they would start off on a race without waiting for the word from their riders.
One morning, just after the train had left the camp, as the boys were riding beside the wagon, listening to a story the trapper was relating, the latter suddenly stopped, and, pointing toward a distant swell, said: “Do you see that ar’, youngsters?”