ut it meant good shooting,
too. The Ballard was a very accurate, handy little weapon; it belonged
to me, and was the first rifle I ever owned or used. With it I had once
killed a deer, the only specimen of large game I had then shot; and I
presented the rifle to my brother when he went to Texas. In our happy
ignorance we deemed it quite good enough for Buffalo or anything else;
but out on the plains my brother soon found himself forced to procure a
heavier and more deadly weapon.

When camp was pitched the horses were turned loose to graze and refresh
themselves after their trying journey, during which they had lost flesh
woefully. They were watched and tended by the two men who were always
left in camp, and, save on rare occasions, were only used to haul in the
buffalo hides. The camp-guards for the time being acted as cooks; and,
though coffee and flour both ran short and finally gave out, fresh meat
of every kind was abundant. The camp was never without buffalo-beef,
deer and antelope venison, wild turkeys, prairie-chickens, quails,
ducks, and rabbits. The birds were simply "potted," as occasion
required; when the quarry was deer or antelope, the hunters took the
dogs with them to run down the wounded animals. But almost the entire
attention of the hunters was given to the buffalo. After an evening
spent in lounging round the campfire and a sound night's sleep, wrapped
in robes and blankets, they would get up before daybreak, snatch a
hurried breakfast, and start off in couples through the chilly dawn. The
great beasts were very plentiful; in the first day's hunt twenty were
slain; but the herds were restless and ever on the move. Sometimes they
would be seen right by the camp, and again it would need an all-day's
tramp to find them. There was no difficulty in spying them--the chief
trouble with forest game; for on the prairie a buffalo makes no effort
to hide and its black, shaggy bulk looms up as far as the eye can see.
Sometimes they were found in small parties of three or four individuals,
sometimes in bands of about two hundred, and again in great herds of
many thousands; and solitary old bulls, expelled from the herds, were
common. If on broken land, among the hills and ravines, there was not
much difficulty in approaching from the leeward; for, though the
sense of smell in the buffalo is very acute, they do not see well at a
distance through their overhanging frontlets of coarse and matted
hair. If, as was gen