x him too
severely to find good grass; for he is now feeble, and exertion an
impossibility. In this new stage of his existence he seems to have
completely lost his courage. Frightened at his own shadow, or the
rustling of a leaf, he is the very incarnation of nervousness and
suspicion. Gregarious in his habits from birth, solitude, foreign to
his whole nature, has changed him into a new creature; and his inherent
terror of the most trivial things is intensified to such a degree
that if a man were compelled to undergo such constant alarm, it would
probably drive him insane in less than a week. Nobody ever saw one of
these miserable and helplessly forlorn creatures dying a natural death,
or ever heard of such an occurrence. The cowardly coyote and the gray
wolf had already marked him for their own; and they rarely missed their
calculations.

Riding suddenly to the top of a divide once with a party of friends in
1866, we saw standing below us in the valley an old buffalo bull, the
very picture of despair. Surrounding him were seven gray wolves in the
act of challenging him to mortal combat. The poor beast, undoubtedly
realizing the utter hopelessness of his situation, had determined to
die game. His great shaggy head, filled with burrs, was lowered to the
ground as he confronted his would-be executioners; his tongue, black and
parched, lolled out of his mouth, and he gave utterance at intervals to
a suppressed roar.

The wolves were sitting on their haunches in a semi-circle immediately
in front of the tortured beast, and every time that the fear-stricken
buffalo would give vent to his hoarsely modulated groan, the wolves
howled in concert in most mournful cadence.

After contemplating his antagonists for a few moments, the bull made a
dash at the nearest wolf, tumbling him howling over the silent prairie;
but while this diversion was going on in front, the remainder of the
pack started for his hind legs, to hamstring him. Upon this the poor
brute turned to the point of attack only to receive a repetition of it
in the same vulnerable place by the wolves, who had as quickly turned
also and fastened themselves on his heels again. His hind quarters
now streamed with blood and he began to show signs of great physical
weakness. He did not dare to lie down; that would have been instantly
fatal. By this time he had killed three of the wolves or so maimed them
that they were entirely out of the fight.

At this juncture the su