the rumbling and pawing began, Colonel Bedson used to
send his herders out on the fleetest buffalo ponies to part the
contestants; for, like the king of beasts that he is, the buffalo does
not know how to surrender. He fights till he can fight no more; and if
he is not killed, is likely to be mangled, a deposed king, whipped and
broken-spirited and relegated to the fag-end of the trail, where he
drags lamely after the subjects he once ruled.

Some day the barking of a prairie-dog, the rustle of a leaf, the shadow
of a cloud, startles a giddy young cow. She throws up her head and is
off. There is a stampede--myriad forms lumbering over the earth till the
ground rocks and nothing remains of the buffalo herd but the smoking
dust of the far horizon--nothing but the poor, old, deposed king, too
weak to keep up the pace, feeble with fear, trembling at his own shadow,
leaping in terror at a leaf blown by the wind.

After that the end is near, and the old buffalo must realize that fact
as plainly as a human being would. Has he roamed the plains and guarded
the calves from sleuths of the trail and seen the devourers leap on a
fallen comrade before death has come, and yet does not know what those
vague, gray forms are, always hovering behind him, always sneaking to
the crest of a hill when he hides in the valley, always skulking through
the prairie grass when he goes to a lookout on the crest of the hill,
always stopping when he stops, creeping closer when he lies down,
scuttling when he wheels, snapping at his heels when he stoops for a
drink? If the buffalo did not know what these creatures meant, he would
not have spent his entire life from calfhood guarding against them. But
he does know; and therein lies the tragedy of the old king's end. He
invariably seeks out some steep background where he can take his last
stand against the wolves with a face to the foe.

But the end is inevitable.

While the main pack baits him to the fore, skulkers dart to the rear;
and when, after a struggle that lasts for days, his hind legs sink
powerless under him, hamstrung by the snap of some vicious coyote, he
still keeps his face to the foe. But in sheer horror of the tragedy the
rest is untellable; for the hungry creatures that prey do not wait till
death comes to the victim.

Poor old king! Is anything that man has ever done to the buffalo herd
half as tragically pitiful as nature's process of deposing a buffalo
leader?

Catlin and Inm