The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains / The Bloody Border of Missouri and Kansas. The Story of the Slaughter of the Buffalo. Westward among the Big Game and Wild Tribes. A Story of Mountain and Plain

by John R. Cook

After going about a half-mile he rode down from a little rise he had gone upon, and waited for me to come up to him. When I came up he said: "Now drive on to yonder plum thicket, and go up on the bench to the left of it and wait and watch for me." I did so, and when I got there I saw that the buffaloes were in about the same position as they were the night before, only there were not so many. What breeze there was came from the northeast. I afterward learned much more about buffaloes than I knew then.

I had not waited long until I heard that loud and boom-like report of the "big fifty," that I was to hear more or less of for the next three years. Again I heard it; then about two miles west of where this report came from, pealed out the same deep roar and it came from George Simpson's big fifty. Then from Buck in front of me I heard again the loud detonating sound, and I saw the smoke as it floated away in the air to the southwest, and then for half an hour or more a desultory firing was kept up by both guns. The sound from Buck's gun was much more distinct than from George's, the former being much closer, and more on a line with the air-current.

After about three-quarters of an hour Buck rode up on an eminence in front of me, and waved his hat. I started toward him, and there was not a buffalo in sight; they had all hurried back over the divide toward Wolf creek,—the same creek where seven months after I picked up the brass kettle that verdigris-poisoned me.

Coming up to where Buck was, he informed me that he had killed sixteen buffalo. I was thrilled with delight; whereas, in less than four months I looked upon such things as a matter of course.

Following Buck, and driving nearly half a mile further, we came to the first carcass. One of the horses in the team was so frightened at sight and scent of the dead animal that we had much trouble to manage him. He was flighty and nervous, so much so that we had to unhitch and tie him to the wagon while I skinned the first buffalo. But before we got them all skinned we could drive up to the side of a carcass, and he would pay no attention to it. We thought that the quiet, sedate manner in which his mate acted had made him ashamed of himself.

Buck had skinned a few buffaloes in Colorado, and to me at that time he seemed like an expert. But in four months I could double-discount him. I would not attempt to tell the different positions and attitudes I placed myself in that day. Suffice to say, I got the hides off from ten of them, and when we got to camp, about four o'clock in the evening, I was so stiff and sore I could hardly get out of the wagon. While I was skinning the first buffalo, Buck rode out in the direction where George Simpson had been shooting and got back a little after I had started in on the second one.

These carcasses were strung out at even intervals for half a mile, in the direction that all the others went, viz., northeast. Some had turned to right and left of the line of travel. Buck skinned two of the carcasses while I was taking the hide from one. He would ride over the breaks of the coulée and be gone for an hour or so and come back and skin two more, then off again in some other direction. And when I was skinning my tenth carcass he came back and skinned the two remaining ones.

We took the hump from both sides of the hump ribs, of all the carcasses. In taking out the hump we inserted the knife at the coupling of the loin, cutting forward down the lower side, as far forward as the perpendicular ribs ran; then, starting at the loin again, would cut down on the upper side; then, taking hold of the end of the piece, would cut and hold off a little, running the knife as before, down the upper side,—thus taking out a strip from a full-grown animal about three feet long and widening and being thicker as it went forward, and near the front of the hump ribs it would as a rule be ten or twelve inches wide and four or five inches thick. When first taken out and when hung up for a couple of days with the big end down, it became shrunken, or "set," as we termed it. It also became tender and brittle, with no taint. The front end had a streak of lean and fat alternating, and when fried in tallow made a feast for the gods.

I had left the camp that morning without taking any drinking-water with me, and was very thirsty nearly all day, which seemed to contribute toward weakening me. But by quenching my thirst, lying down a few minutes, then eating a hearty meal, with strong coffee, and by stretching and working my arms and lower limbs, I was ready for the pegging-out of the hides, and before it was too dark to see how to strike a peg I had the sixteen hides pegged out and three dollars earned before going to bed, for the ten buffaloes that I had skinned and pegged out.

We reloaded the empty shells from the day's shooting, fifty-one in all, or a little over an average of three shots to the animal. Some were killed with one shot, some two, some three, and one with five shots. Others went off with the herd, carrying lead in their bodies.