We all went to the killing, and were as busy as bees until the thirty-seven were skinned and the hides were in camp. That same evening I killed thirteen more buffaloes, and the next day eighteen more.
After the experience related above I never picked up my gun but what I would see to it that the sights were all right. All that summer I did most of the killing, but mostly with Charlie's gun; for my own gun had hoodooed me. If I made a wild shot, I examined the front sight. Any hunter will make wild shots sometimes. But that particular gun got on my nerves. I would keep thinking of and talking about that lost opportunity.
So after a few days Charlie said: "Now, John, when you do the killing, take my gun and leave me yours;" which I did thereafter.
Jimmie had a condemned army gun, the old Long Tom; and Pedro, the Mexican, had a Remington revolver that he called his pistolie.
Frequently, in a killing, the hunter would leave badly wounded buffaloes when in a hurry to go to another band. In such cases the skinners would give them their last shot, if they were not dead when they arrived on the skinning-ground.
After we had been in this camp about twenty days, the hunting was not as profitable as we liked, and hearing other guns down the creek we decided to hunt for another camp. Charlie and I went up the creek a good half-day's ride and found fair hunting, to which we moved our camp the next day, and the day following I made the biggest killing of all my three years' hunting.
It happened about midday. The weather was quite hot; for it was now the latter part of June. These buffaloes were undoubtedly very thirsty, for they came down to the creek from a broad plain to the northwest, and had probably been bombarded from the Beaver creek waters to the north when they were in a thirsty condition.
There must have been more than a thousand of them. They came on to the creek in a wild, pell-mell run. After drinking they came out on a flat about 150 yards from the creek, on the opposite side from where they entered it. There they stopped and commenced lying down. By the time I got up within good gunshot, perhaps half of them were lying down. At this time they had all shed their last year's growth of hair. Some that were standing seemed to be sound asleep. I was not more than eighty steps away when I began shooting. They were a mixed herd—very old and young bulls, old and younger cows, then all ages from red spring calves up. I shot a tremendously large bull first. All he did was to "cringe" a little. Not half of those lying down arose at the report of the gun. After making three good dead shots those closest to me moved off a little toward the creek. Getting in a good shot at the leader, I stopped him and that stopped the rest.
I now had, what I had so often heard about but had never actually seen before, a stand. Charlie Hart, while I was with him, had given me some good pointers how to manage "a stand," if I ever got one. He told me not to shoot fast enough to heat the gun-barrel to an over-expansion; to always try to hit the outside ones; to shoot at any that started to walk off, unless I thought they were mortally wounded. He said that "with an over-expanded gun-barrel the bullet would go wobbling, and would be liable to break a leg; and that would start a bolt."
After I had killed twenty-five that I knew of, the smoke from the gun commenced to hang low, and was slow in disappearing. So I shifted my position and, in doing so, got still closer. And I know that many of the herd saw me move. I had shot perhaps half a dozen times, when, as I was reloading, I heard a keen whistle behind me. Looking around I saw Charlie Cook. He was on his all-fours, creeping up to me. He said: "Go ahead; take it easy; I am coming with more cartridges." He crawled right up to my side with my gun and an extra sack of ammunition for me, and a canteen of water. He asked if the gun was shooting all right. I told him "Yes; but the barrel is pretty warm." He told me to try my own gun a while and let his gun cool a little. We exchanged guns, and I commenced again.