Four days on the Platte, and yet no buffalo! The wagons one morning had left the camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire, playing with the lock of his rifle, while his 5 sturdy pony stood quietly behind him, looking over his head. At last he got up, patted the neck of the pony (which, from an exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had christened Five Hundred Dollar), and then mounted with a melancholy air.

"What is it, Henry?"

10 "Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black-all black with buffalo!"

In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope; until, at the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall 15 white wagons and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so slowly advancing that they seemed motionless; and

far on the left rose the broken line of scorched, desolate sandhills. The vast plain waved with tall rank grass that swept our horses' bellies; it swayed to and fro in billows with the light breeze, and far and near, antelope and wolves were moving 5 through it, the hairy backs of the latter alternately appearing and disappearing as they bounded awkwardly along; while the antelope, with the simple curiosity peculiar to them; would often approach us closely, their little horns and white throats just visible above the grass tops as they gazed eagerly at us with their 10 round, black eyes.

I dismounted, and amused myself with firing at the wolves. Henry attentively scrutinized the surrounding landscape; at length he gave a shout, and called on me to mount again, pointing in the direction of the sand-hills. A mile and a half from us, two 15 minute black specks slowly traversed the face of one of the bare, glaring declivities, and disappeared behind the summit. "Let us go!" cried Henry, belaboring the sides of Five Hundred Dollar; and we galloped rapidly through the rank grass toward the hills.

From one of their openings descended a deep ravine, widening 20 as it issued on the prairie. We entered it, and galloping up, in a moment were surrounded by the bleak sand-hills. Half of their steep sides were bare; the rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass and various plants, conspicuous among which appeared the reptile-like prickly-pear. They were gashed with 25 numberless ravines; and as the sky had suddenly darkened and a cold gusty wind arisen, the strange shrubs and the dreary hills looked doubly wild and desolate. But Henry's face was all eagerness. He tore off a little hair from the piece of buffalo robe under his saddle, and threw it up, to show the course of the wind. 30 It blew directly before us. The game were therefore to windward, and it was necessary to make our best speed to get round them.

We scrambled from this ravine, and galloping away through the hollows, soon found another, winding like a snake among the hills, and so deep that it completely concealed us. We rode 85 up the bottom of it, glancing through the shrubbery at its edge,

till Henry abruptly jerked his rein and slid out of his saddle. Full a quarter of a mile distant, on the outline of the farthest hill, a long procession of buffalo were walking in Indian file with the utmost gravity and deliberation; then more appeared, clam5 bering from a hollow not far off, and ascending, one behind the other, the grassy slope of another hill; then a shaggy head and a pair of short, broken horns appeared, issuing out of a ravine close at hand, and with a slow, stately step, one by one, the enormous brutes came into view, taking their way across the valley, wholly 10 unconscious of an enemy. In a moment Henry was worming his way, lying flat on the ground, through grass and prickly-pears, toward his unsuspecting victims. He had with him both my rifle and his own. He was soon out of sight, and still the buffalo kept issuing into the valley. For a long time all was silent; I 15 sat holding his horse, and wondering what he was about, when suddenly, in rapid succession, came the sharp reports of the two rifles, and the whole line of buffalo, quickening their pace into a clumsy trot, gradually disappeared over the ridge of the hill. Henry rose to his feet, and stood looking after them.

20 "You have missed them," said I.

"Yes," said Henry; "let us go." He descended into the ravine, X loaded the rifles, and mounted his horse.

We rode up the hill after the buffalo. The herd was out of sight when we reached the top, but lying not far off was one 25 quite lifeless, and another struggling in the death agony.

"You see I miss him!" remarked Henry. He had fired from a distance of more than a hundred and fifty yards, and both balls had passed through the lungs the true mark in shooting buffalo. The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying 30 our horses to the horns of the victims, Henry began the bloody work of dissection. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror and indignation when I endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of rawhide always carried for this purpose, dangling at the back of the saddle. After some difficulty we overcame his scruples; 35 and heavily burdened, we set out on our return. Scarcely had

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we issued upon the open prairie, when the pricking sleet came driving, gust upon gust, directly in our faces. It was strangely dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The freezing storm soon penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of our horses 5 kept us warm enough, as we forced them unwillingly in the teeth of the sleet and rain. The prairie in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs had burrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in a 10 cornfield; but not a yelp was to be heard; not the nose of a single citizen was visible; all had retired to the depths of their burrows, and we envied them their dry and comfortable habitations. An hour's hard riding showed us our tent dimly looming through the storm, one side puffed out by the force of the wind, and the 15 other collapsed in proportion, while the horses stood shivering close around, and the wind kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of three old, half-dead trees above. Shaw sat on his saddle in the entrance, with a pipe in his mouth, and his arms folded, contemplating with cool satisfaction the piles of meat that 20 we flung on the ground before him. A dark and dreary night succeeded; but the sun rose with a heat so sultry and languid that the captain excused himself on that account from waylaying an old buffalo bull, walking with stupid gravity over the prairie to drink at the river. So much for the climate of the Platte!

AN UNSUCCESSFUL HUNT

25 On the following morning Henry Chatillon, looking over the ocean-like expanse, saw near the foot of the distant hills something that looked like a band of buffalo. He was not sure, he said, but at all events, if they were buffalo, there was a fine chance for a race. Shaw and I at once determined to try the 80 speed of our horses, and we set out at a trot. The game appeared about three miles distant.

As we advanced, the band of buffalo were transformed into certain clumps of tall bushes, dotting the prairie for a consider

able distance. At this ludicrous termination of our chase, we turned back toward the party. We were skirting the brink of a deep ravine, when we saw Henry and the broad-chested pony coming toward us at a gallop.

5 "Here's old Papin and Frederic, down from Fort Laramie!" shouted Henry, long before he came up. We had for some days expected this encounter. Papin was the bourgeois of Fort Laramie. He had come down the river with the buffalo robes and the beaver, the produce of the last winter's trading. I had among 10 our baggage a letter which I wished to commit to their hands; so, requesting Henry to detain the boats if he could until my return, I set out after the wagons. They were about four miles in advance. In half an hour I overtook them, got the letter, trotted back upon the trail, and looking carefully as I rode, saw 15 a patch of broken, storm-blasted trees, and moving near them some little black specks like men and horses. Arriving at the place, I found a strange assembly. The boats, eleven in number, deep-laden with the skins, hugged close to the shore to escape being borne down by the swift current. The rowers, swarthy 20 Mexicans, turned their brutish faces upward to look as I reached the bank. Papin sat in the middle of one of the boats upon the canvas covering that protected the robes. He was a stout, robust fellow, with a little gray eye that had a peculiarly sly twinkle. "Frederic" also stretched his tall, rawboned propor25 tions close by the bourgeois. The "mountain-men" completed the group, some lounging in the boats, some strolling on shore, some attired in gayly painted buffalo robes like Indian dandies, some with hair saturated with red paint and glue, and one bedaubed with vermilion upon his forehead and each cheek.

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I shook hands with the bourgeois and delivered the letter; then the boats swung around into the stream and floated away. They had reason for haste, for already the voyage from Fort Laramie had occupied a full month, and the river was growing daily more shallow. Fifty times a day the boats had been 35 aground; indeed, those who navigate the Platte invariably spend