"Wanna see the buffalo!" Alfred protested.
Emma said, "Ally, you go with Barbara."
Joe stopped to let Barbara take the younger children and drove on. The buffalo was a fat cow with a big hump, and Joe thought curiously that he had never really known before how large buffalo can be. He looked at Emma's happy eyes, and knew what she was thinking. The Tower family still had problems, but short rations was no longer one of them.
Tad asked, puzzled, "What are we going to do with it, Pa?"
"Guess we'll have to butcher it like we would a beef."
He hadn't any pulleys to hoist the enormous carcass into a tree, and there weren't any trees to hoist it into. Joe bled the animal. Unhitching the mules, he used them to turn the carcass over on its back. Tad had shot better than he knew, for the buffalo was a barren cow and that was always the best eating. Joe began at one haunch, Tad at the other, and they skinned the dead beast. The freed skin was dropped on both sides, so that no dirt would cling to the sticky, warm carcass. Emma brought her carving boards and containers from the wagon.
Joe scratched his head, at a loss as to just what they should take and what they should leave. Somewhere he had heard that the hump was the best part of any buffalo, and certainly they'd want the liver. The rest of the meat would have to cool and season before it would be fit for use, but the liver they could eat tonight. However, before they could do anything about the hump, the carcass would have to be made lighter.
Expertly Joe sliced around one of the haunches, and he was surprised when he lifted it quite easily. It weighed, he estimated, no more than a hundred pounds. Maybe buffalo looked bigger than they were. Joe laid the haunch on a carving board and Emma stood ready with her knife.
"You finish what you're doing," she told him. "I'll take care of this."
She began slicing the haunch into steaks. Joe and Tad separated the other haunch, and opened the belly cavity to get the liver. Of the front quarters they took only the choicest parts, and Joe used his saw to cut out the loin. He rolled the lightened carcass over on its side and sliced experimentally at the hump. He was surprised to find a ridge of bone there, and he stood to look down on it. Joe tried again, and failed, to remove the hump. He shrugged. Evidently, whoever had said that the hump was a choice part of any buffalo, didn't know what they were talking about.