ite barbarians practised. The plains-man--who is the true
type of the buffalo-runner--entered the lists on a fair field with the
odds a hundred to one against himself, and the only advantages over
brute strength the dexterity of his own aim.

Man was the least cruel of the buffalo's foes. Far crueler havoc was
worked by the prairie fire and the fights for supremacy in the
leadership of the herd and the sleuths of the trail and the wild
stampedes often started by nothing more than the shadow of a cloud on
the prairie. Natural history tells of nothing sadder than a buffalo herd
overtaken by a prairie fire. Flee as they might, the fiery hurricane was
fleeter; and when the flame swept past, the buffalo were left staggering
over blackened wastes, blind from the fire, singed of fur to the raw,
and mad with a thirst they were helpless to quench.

In the fights for leadership of the herd old age went down before youth.
Colonel Bedson's daughter has often told the writer of her sheer terror
as a child when these battles took place among the buffalo. The first
intimation of trouble was usually a boldness among the young fellows of
maturing strength. On the rove for the first year or two of their
existence these youngsters were hooked and butted back into place as a
rear-guard; and woe to the fellow whose vanity tempted him within range
of the leader's sharp, pruning-hook horns! Just as the wolf aimed for
the throat or leg sinews of a victim, so the irate buffalo struck at the
point most vulnerable to his sharp, curved horn--the soft flank where a
quick rip meant torture and death.

Comes a day when the young fellows refuse to be hooked and hectored to
the rear! Then one of the boldest braces himself, circling and guarding
and wheeling and keeping his lowered horns in line with the head of the
older rival. That is the buffalo challenge! And there presently follows
a bellowing like the rumbling of distant thunder, each keeping his eye
on the other, circling and guarding and countering each other's moves,
like fencers with foils. When one charges, the other wheels to meet the
charge straight in front; and with a crash the horns are locked. It is
then a contest of strength against strength, dexterity against
dexterity. Not unusually the older brute goes into a fury from sheer
amazement at the younger's presumption. His guarded charges become blind
rushes, and he soon finds himself on the end of a pair of piercing
horns. As soon as