“Whew!”
“The old emigrant trails were marked for years and years by the whitened skulls of buffaloes, wantonly killed by the travellers. Everybody who came West wanted to say that he had shot a buffalo. Why, Dig! they used to roam all this great United States from the Pacific Slope to Lake Champlain. The last buffalo was killed east of the Mississippi River in 1832.”
“And now it’s hard to find any of ’em,” said Dig. “Where have they gone?”
“Indiscriminate killing,” replied Chet. “So the books say. Yet in 1859 some people estimated that there were more buffaloes grazing these ranges than there were cattle in the whole country.
“Of course, the Indians slaughtered many of them. They were the only beef the redmen had. The prairie Indians—the Comanches, Sioux and Pawnees—just about lived on buffalo meat all the year around. And their skins covered their winter teepees, clothed them in cold weather, and otherwise were made useful. Their hoofs made glue and their tendons were used by the squaws to sew with. Yes indeed! a buffalo was a mighty useful animal to a redskin.”
“Well,” sighed Dig, “a buffalo is going to be a mighty useful animal to you and me, Chet—if we shoot one. Why, say! there won’t be another fellow in Silver Run who can show a buffalo head for a trophy.”
“Well,” Chet said, “if you propose to cart head and all back to town you’ll have some contract, boy. I believe the head of a bull buffalo will weigh almost as much as the rest of his body.”
“Whew!”
“That’s what makes of him such a good battering-ram. They say a blow from the head of a two-months calf will knock a man over. Suppose Stone Fence had been a buffalo calf. When he rammed you into that creek you’d have been drowned.”
“Huh! That’s straining a point,” replied Dig. “You can bet I’m not going to get in front of any of the creatures.”