"Probably the most cruel of all bison-shooting pastime is that of firing from the cars. During certain periods in the spring and fall, when the large herds are crossing the Kansas Pacific Railroad, the trains run for a hundred miles or more among countless thousands of the shaggy monarchs of the Plains. The bison has a strange and entirely unaccountable instinct or habit which leads it to attempt crossing in front of any moving object near it. It frequently happened, in the time of the old stages, that the driver had to rein up his horses until the herd which he had started had crossed the road ahead of him. To accomplish this feat, if the object of their fright was moving rapidly, the animals would often run for miles.
"When the iron horse comes rushing into their solitudes, and snorting out his fierce alarms, the herds, though perhaps half a mile from his path, will lift their heads and gaze intently for a few minutes toward the object thus approaching them with a roar which causes the earth to tremble, and enveloped in a white cloud that streams further and higher than the dust of the old stage-coach ever did; and then, having determined its course, instead of fleeing back to the distant valleys, away they go, charging over the ridge across which the iron rails lie, apparently determined to cross in front of the locomotive at all hazards. The rate per mile of the passenger trains is slow upon the Plains, and hence it often happens that the cars and buffaloes will be side by side for a mile or two, the brutes abandoning the effort to cross only when their foe has emerged entirely ahead. During these races the car windows are opened, and numerous breech-loaders fling hundreds of bullets among the densely crowded and fast-flying masses. Many of the poor animals fall, and more go off to die in the ravines. The train speeds on, and the act is repeated every few miles until Buffalo Land is passed."
Almost with prophetic eye he continued:
"Let this slaughter continue for ten years, and the bison of the American continent will become extinct. The number of valuable robes and pounds of meat which would thus be lost to us and posterity, will run too far into the millions to be easily calculated. All over the Plains, lying in disgusting masses of putrefaction along valley and hill, are strewn immense carcasses of wantonly slain buffalo. They line the Kansas Pacific road for two hundred miles."
A great herd of buffaloes on the Plains in the early days, when one could approach near enough without disturbing it to quietly watch its organization, and the apparent discipline which its leaders seemed to exact, was a very curious sight. Among the striking features of the spectacle was the apparently uniform manner in which the immense mass of shaggy animals moved; there was constancy of action indicating a degree of intelligence to be found only in the most intelligent of the brute creation. Frequently the larger herd was broken up into many smaller ones, that traveled relatively close together, each led by an independent master. Perhaps only a few rods marked the dividing-line between them, but it was always unmistakably plain, and each moved synchronously in the direction in which all were going.
The leadership of the herd was attained only by hard struggles for the place; once reached, however, the victor was immediately recognized, and kept his authority until some new aspirant overcame him, or he became superannuated and was driven out of the herd to meet his inevitable fate, a prey to those ghouls of the desert, the gray wolves.
In the event of a stampede, every animal of the separate yet consolidated herds rushed off together, as if all had gone mad at once; for the buffalo, like the Texas steer, mule, or domestic horse, stampedes on the slightest provocation—frequently without any assignable cause. Sometimes the simplest affair will start the whole herd: a prairie-dog barking at the entrance of his burrow, a shadow of one of themselves or that of a passing cloud, is sufficient to make them run for miles as if a real and dangerous enemy were at their heels.
Stampedes were a great source of profit to the Indians of the Plains. The Comanches were particularly expert and daring in this kind of robbery. They even trained their horses to run from one point to another, in expectation of the coming of the wagon trains on the trail. When a camp was made that was nearly in range, they turned their trained animals loose, which at once flew across the prairie, passing through the herd and penetrating the very corrals of their victims. All of the picketed horses and mules would endeavor to follow these decoys, and were invariably led right into the haunts of the Indians, who easily secured them. Young horses and mules were easily frightened; and in the confusion which generally ensued, great injury was frequently done to the runaways themselves.
At times when the herd was very large, the horses scattered over the prairie and were irrevocably lost; and such as did not become wild fell a prey to the wolves. That fate was very frequently the lot of stampeded horses bred in the States, they not having been trained by a prairie life to care for themselves. Instead of stopping and bravely fighting off the bloodthirsty beasts, they would run. Then the whole pack were sure to leave the bolder animals and make for the runaways, which they seldom failed to overtake and dispatch.
Like an army, a herd of buffaloes put out vedettes to give the alarm in case anything beyond the ordinary occurred. These sentinels were always to be seen in groups of four, five, or even six, at some distance from the main body. When they saw something approaching that the herd should beware of or get away from, they started on the run directly for the center of the great mass of their peacefully grazing congeners. Meanwhile, the young bulls were on duty as sentinels on the edge of the main herd, watching the vedettes; the moment the latter made for the center, the former raised their heads, and in the peculiar manner of their species gazed all around and sniffed the air as if they could smell both the danger and its direction. Should there be something which their instinct told them to guard against, the leader took his position in front, the cows and calves crowded in the center, while the rest of the males gathered on the flanks and in the rear, indicating a gallantry that might be imitated at times by the genus homo.