CHAPTER VIII

A BUFFALO STORY

Two days later Jack, pretty tired and riding a tired horse, came into camp after a long day, and was delighted to see Hugh standing by the cook fire, as usual smoking his pipe. Jack shouted a greeting and Hugh waved his pipe in salutation, and a moment later when the saddle had been thrown on the ground, and the tired horse was rolling, the two shook hands.

"Well," exclaimed Jack, "what's the news? Did anything happen to you on your way back with the cattle?"

"No," answered Hugh; "we just pushed 'em along as fast as we comfortably could, brought 'em to camp late at night, pretty tired, and didn't bother to bed 'em down or watch 'em. They got in hungry, and as soon as they had eaten a plenty they lay down and stayed down all night. When we got within five or six miles of the ranch I sent Rube in ahead and pushed the cattle on myself, and before very long your Uncle and Joe came out and we drove the herd down below the little lake and turned 'em loose there. That was yesterday afternoon pretty early. Rube and I went up to the bunk-house and gossiped a while with Mr. Sturgis, and then after we had had something to eat, we turned around and rode until dark and then camped, and came on here to-day."

"That was a good quiet trip," said Jack. "I am glad that nothing bad happened. There was no reason why anything should happen, for these cattle are almost on their own range; and they shouldn't be wild or uneasy. What's the news back at the ranch, Hugh? Did Uncle Will, or Joe, have anything special to talk about?"

"Not a thing," was the reply. "It's just as quiet there as can be. Joe's 'tending to his stock, what little of it there is there, and Mr. Sturgis, I reckon, just reads and writes. By the way, though, he did tell me that he went up on the mountains back of the house the other day and killed a yearling for meat. He said there were lots of elk there--big bunches of cows and calves. When I told him I was coming right back here, he sat down and wrote to you and asked me to take the letter along with two or three others that had come for you. You see, he sent Joe into the railroad for mail only two or three days ago."

Jack took the letters, and presently went off to read them. Two were from his father and mother, in New York, and one from his uncle. By the time he had finished reading them, supper was ready and the boys were crowding around the fire, filling their plates and cups.

After supper, Hugh, Joe and Jack were sitting together near the cook fire, Hugh smoking and the boys slapping viciously at the mosquitoes, which were pretty bad.

"I saw one thing to-day, son," said Hugh, "that interested me a little, and that was a buffalo carcass."

"Why, Hugh," exclaimed Jack, "I didn't know there were any buffalo about here. Of course, I've heard that there is a little bunch up in the Rattlesnake Mountains, but I've never seen any sign down this way."

"No," returned Hugh; "I don't guess there are any buffalo around here. The carcass to-day is the first I've seen for six or seven years. I remember about the time you first came out to the ranch we ran across a buffalo that had been killed not very long before. I figured that it had wandered out from the Rattlesnake Mountains and crossed the Platte, but I never knew what had killed it. I don't know what killed this one that I found to-day. It was killed this spring sometime, but had been dead too long for me to find out much about it. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a very few buffalo up in the Rattlesnake hills; and every now and then, if one comes out and goes down to the Platte River, somebody takes a shot or two at it, and it gets killed. I haven't heard of anybody killing a buffalo around here for a good many years.

"I reckon I've told you, son, about what Uncle Jack Robinson used to say about buffalo on the Laramie Plains, and in this high country, away back long before I came out here, and in fact I guess when Uncle Jack was quite a young man--anyway, not more than a middle-aged man. He said that in his young days, when he first came into the country, the Laramie Plains and all this high country was full of buffalo, but that one winter there came a terrible snowstorm without any wind, and the snow lay four or five feet deep on the ground. After this snow came a change of weather, either a big thaw or a warm rain, and then a freeze, and the whole country was crusted over so that none of the animals could get down to the grass to feed. That winter, Uncle Jack said, killed just about everything in the country and, among the other things, the buffalo. He said that since that time there never had been any buffalo on the Laramie Plains, or in this high country. I always figured from what he told me that this big storm must have come in the winter of 1839-40. Uncle Jack said that for years after that it was hard to find any game up in this country, but, of course, as time went on the deer and the elk and the antelope got plentiful again, but the buffalo never came back."

"I suppose the fact is, Hugh," said Jack, "that by that time the people on the plains were killing them so that they had no chance to work back into the mountains."

"Likely that was so," assented Hugh.

"There's another thing about buffalo I want to ask you," said Jack; "though I think you've told me about it before. Some of the old books talk, as I remember it, about buffalo spending the summer up in the north, and then migrating south in the fall, spending the winter down in Texas or Mexico, and then going back again when spring came. I'm pretty sure you told me once that there was never anything like this."

"No," answered Hugh, "there never was; and if you'll think about it a little bit you'll see there couldn't be. It's a long way from the Canada line down to Mexico, and just as far back again. If the buffalo made journeys like that spring and fall, they'd never have time to do anything else, and they sure would never be fat. Of course buffalo shifted their ranges more or less, spring and fall. They'd move up into the high country on the flanks of the mountains, and often up mountain valleys in summer, and then in fall they'd drift east on to the prairie and get into breaks or broken country of one kind and another, and stop there. Sometimes they'd make quite long journeys and it would be hard for the Indians to find them, but they never started off to travel a thousand miles or so to avoid cold weather, and then turned round and came back to avoid hot weather.

"The buffalo didn't mind the cold very much; on the other hand, they like shelter in the worst weather. I've seen places on the flanks of the mountains in the broken country where the buffalo wintered--places they used to go to for shelter in the worst storms--where you would find the dung four or five feet deep. I remember one such place in a little side ravine running into a draw that goes down into the Rosebud, where I took the trouble to dig down into the dry dung, and I made a hole half as deep as I am tall, and didn't get to the bottom then. This was a sheltered place under thick pine trees, and all the signs showed that the buffalo used to gather there to get out of the wind and snow, and stand there pretty nearly as warm as they would be in a barn. Right within half a mile there was the best kind of feed."

"Don't you remember, Hugh," interrupted Jack, "that year we went up to the head of the St. Mary's River, how you showed me the place where the sheep used to come down and stand in winter?"

"Sure," said Hugh. "That's another sort of an animal, but it shows what I've said to you before, that all animals, except those that are hunting other animals, are very likely to live in a small range of country, and not to get away from it except at some change of the seasons, or when they are driven away. It's just the same with range stock--cows or horses. You ask Joe here, and I reckon he'll tell you the same thing."

"That's so," asserted Joe. "Everybody knows that a few horses will stop in a particular place and live there all through the summer, or all through the winter; they always drink at the same stream; they always feed about the same place; they go up on the same high point to stand and look. It's something like that, too, with the cattle; and I reckon it's that way with all animals."

"That's what I believe," said Hugh; "and I can tell you a story about something that I saw once, and that plenty of other people saw too, that seems to me to prove it.

"In the fall of 1866 I was working for the government, sort of half scout and half general handy man, and went with Lieutenant Stouch--a mighty fine officer he was--down into Kansas to build up old Fort Fletcher, which was on the north fork of Big Creek, and about sixteen miles below Fort Hayes.

"It was nice, bright, cool fall weather, and when we got to the place that had been picked out for the Fort, and went into camp, we saw quite a bunch of buffalo feeding in the stream bottom, hardly more than half a mile above us. Of course the country then was full of buffalo, and this was one of their great ranges. I suppose there must have been eight or nine hundred in this bunch.

"When Lieutenant Stouch saw this herd, he had what always struck me as a mighty smart thought, and a thought too that showed that he knew a whole lot about animals, and about the plains country; and yet he hadn't been out there very long, because the war was only just over and he'd fought through the war. It occurred to him not to meddle with these buffalo and that just as long as they stopped where they were, he could get fresh meat for his command with mighty little trouble. So he gave orders to the soldiers not to hunt up the creek, but to do their hunting downstream, and especially not to do anything to frighten these buffalo.

"He picked out a man and sent him to go up the creek to kill a buffalo, but told him not to show himself before he shot, nor after; just to kill the cow and then stay there hid, until a wagon came up for the meat. The man obeyed orders. When he fired, the buffalo he had shot at ran a few steps, and then stopped and lay down. Those nearest to it gave a jump or two and looked around, but as they saw no one they went on feeding.

"They were watching in camp, and when they saw what had happened they sent out a wagon to bring in the meat, and as it drove up slowly to the place, the buffalo near it just walked out of the way. The dead animal was butchered and loaded into the wagon and brought back to camp.

"This happened every day. Nothing occurred to scare the buffalo. They got used to seeing the people at work on the buildings and got used to the wagons.

"After a while, a couple more companies of soldiers came to the post; one company of cavalry and one of infantry. Lieutenant Stouch told the officers what he had been doing, and asked them to follow out the same plan. They did so, and the buffalo stopped right there. This went on until well into the winter, when one day in the morning Lieutenant Stouch sent for me and told me that a sergeant who had just come in from a scout had reported that he had met our buffalo herd traveling up the creek about fifteen miles distant. The Lieutenant told me he believed that these buffalo could be brought back, and asked me what I thought about it. I told him I didn't know, but they ought to be mighty tame, and I believed that they could just quietly be driven back.

"'Well, Johnson,' he said to me, 'I believe so too, and we're going to try it.'

"He took about twenty-five soldiers, and three or four of the officers went along, and we rode off up the creek, and after a while passed the herd and went down into the valley above it. There we scattered out all the way across the bottom like skirmishers, and commenced to walk slowly toward the buffalo. When they first saw us they stood and looked for quite a long time, and I thought it was mighty uncertain whether they would drive or whether they would run off over the bluffs, but after a little those that were nearest to us turned around and began to feed down the valley, working back the way they had come, and before night we had the bunch back on its old feeding ground just above the post, and when it got there we rode out of the valley and round over the hills to camp.

"That bunch of buffalo stayed there for two months longer, and for all I know they would have been there yet, if it hadn't been that, along in April, the Seventh Cavalry, under General Custer, came into the post for supplies, and some of his command ran into those buffalo and chased them to kill meat for the command, and they scattered out and never came back again.

"That bunch of buffalo stayed there in that one place for about six months, not scared, although animals enough were killed out of it to supply a hundred and fifty officers and men with fresh meat during all that time. I reckon there was an animal killed every day or two; only they were killed in a sensible way and the herd was never frightened."

"Well, well," said Joe; "that seems to me one of the strangest things I ever heard of; and it just shows how near buffalo are to being cattle. You can imagine a thing of that kind happening to a bunch of cows, but it's new to me that it could happen to buffalo."

"It seems to me," replied Hugh, "that it shows that wild animals don't spend all their time wandering over the country, as most people think they do, but each set of animals has some little range of country that's like home to them."

"Yes," said Jack, "I guess that's the fact; and yet I believe most people don't understand it at all. I've heard my uncle say the same thing about wild animals, and about some kinds of birds. I mean birds like partridges and quail, that don't go south in winter, the way most birds do."

"Well," exclaimed Hugh, "the fact is that most people don't know anything at all about how wild animals live, and of course they can't have right ideas about 'em. But here I've taken a whole lot of sleeping time talking to you boys about animals! We'd better quit now and turn in."