e 3: The Red River cart was a primitive two-wheeled affair,
made entirely of wood, without nails or metal tires. It was usually
drawn by an ox. (W.M.R.)]

The children and the sound of their laughter gave the camp a domestic
touch. Some of the brown, half-naked youngsters, their skins
glistening in the warm sun, were at work doing odd jobs. Others, too
young to fetch and carry, played with a litter of puppies or with a
wolf cub that had been caught and tamed.

The whole bustling scene was characteristic of time and place. A score
of such outfits, each with its Red River carts and its oxen, its dogs,
its women and children, traveled to the plains each spring to hunt
the bison. They killed thousands upon thousands of them, for it took
several animals to make a sack of pemmican weighing one hundred fifty
pounds. The waste was enormous, since only the choicest cuts of meat
were used.

Already the buffalo were diminishing in numbers. Vast hordes still
roamed the plains. They could be killed by scores and hundreds. But
the end was near. It had been several years since Colonel Dodge
reported that he had halted his party of railroad builders two days
to let a herd of over half a million bison pass. Such a sight was no
longer possible. The pressure of the hunters had divided the game into
the northern and the southern herds. Within four or five years the
slaughter was to be so great that only a few groups of buffalo would
be left.

The significance of this extermination lay largely in its application
to the Indians. The plains tribes were fed and clothed and armed and
housed by means of the buffalo. Even the canoes of the lake Indians
were made from buffalo skins. The failure of the supply reduced the
natives from warriors to beggars.

McRae came forward to meet the traders, the sleeves of his shirt
rolled to the elbows of his muscular brown arms. He stroked a great
red beard and nodded gruffly. It was not in his dour honest nature to
pretend that he was glad to see them when he was not.

"Well, I'm here," growled West, interlarding a few oaths as a
necessary corollary of his speech. "What's it all about, McRae? What
do you know about the smashing of our barrels?"

"I'll settle any reasonable damage," the hunter said.

Bully West frowned. He spread his legs deliberately, folded his arms,
and spat tobacco juice upon a clean hide drying in the sun. "Hold yore
hawsses a minute. The damage'll be enough. Don't you worry abo