Even while I was shooting buffaloes that had not been shot at all, some would lie down apparently unconcerned about the destruction going on around them. I fired slowly and deliberately. Charlie poured some water from the canteen down the muzzle of his gun; then pulled down the breech-block and let the water run out. He then ran a greased rag in the eyelet of the wiping-stick and swabbed the barrel out, leaving the breech-block open for a while, thus cooling the barrel, in order to have that gun ready for use when my own gun got too warm.
About this time I shot an old cow that at the crack of the gun bolted down the creek. I shot at her three times in rapid succession. The third shot broke her back just forward of the coupling.
I laid the gun down and said, "Charlie, finish the job."
He said "No, take my gun and go ahead, this is the greatest sight I ever beheld."
I took his gun, and without thinking put in a 44 cartridge and fired. Then he put the cartridge-sack in front of me, saying, "You used one of your 44's that time." And as I pulled the breech-block down to put in another cartridge, a bull, about a six-year-old, started walking toward us, with his ferocious-looking head raised high. Before I could divine his intentions I fired, and he fell almost as suddenly as the cow whose back I had broken.
I would shoot five or six times, wipe the gun, and we would comment, in a low tone, on the apparent stupidity of the herd. Some came back and stood by the dead ones. Some would hook them as they lay dead. I kept this work up for as much as an hour and a quarter, when I changed guns again. And at the first shot from my own gun I broke the left hind leg above the knee of a big bull that was standing on the outer edge of the herd, about ninety yards from me. He commenced "cavorting" around, jamming up against others, and the leg flopping as he hopped about.
He finally broke in through the midst of the band and my stand. They all began to follow him, and I with the big 50 that I now took from Charlie, commenced a rear attack, Charlie putting cartridges in his belt which I was wearing; and with the belt about half full and several in one pocket, and a half-dozen or so in my left hand, I moved up to a dead buffalo, and got in several good shots; when I moved again, on through the dead ones, to the farthermost one, and fired three more shots and quit. As I walked back through where the carcasses lay the thickest, I could not help but think that I had done wrong to make such a slaughter for the hides alone.
In counting them just as they lay there, their eyes glassy in death, I had killed eighty-eight; and several left the ground with more bad than slight wounds.