ich lasts for several months, and in which
hundreds of men engage. The hunters travel from their homes to the
distant hunting grounds on horseback; but they take with them long
trains of very curious-looking ox-carts, in which the women and
children, who go with their husbands and fathers on these long trips,
ride, and in which the buffalo-meat and hides are carried home.

The ox-carts, or "Pembina buggies," as they are often called, are very
strong and clumsy, and are made entirely of wood, generally by their
owners. The wooden wheels, turning on the ungreased wooden axles, make
the most horrible creaking and groaning; and when, as is often the case,
several hundred or a thousand of these carts are in one train, the noise
they make can be heard for miles.

Each cart is drawn by a single ox, attached to the rude shafts by a
simple and home-made harness of rawhide, with the aid of which the
patient beast draws a load of a thousand pounds for hundreds of miles,
at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a day.

As they approach the buffalo range, where they expect to find their
game, the hunters know that at any moment they may run across hunting
parties of the Sioux, and for them they keep a sharp look-out night and
day.

Some years ago a brave hunter by the name of Jean Bedell, whose home was
in Pembina, joined one of these great hunting parties, taking with him
his wife and their little child, a baby of but a few months old. The
party to which Jean belonged was so large that they had but little fear
of Indians, and did not guard against being surprised by them as
carefully as usual.

One morning as the brigade broke camp, and the long line of carts moved
slowly away toward Devil's Lake, which could be seen gleaming in the
distance, and near which the hunters felt sure they would find buffalo,
Jean Bedell found that a portion of his harness had given out, and he
must stay behind and mend it. He had just finished his task, and started
on after the carts, the groaning and screeching of which could still be
heard in the distance, when other and more terrible sounds, borne
clearly to his ear, caused him to come to a sudden halt.

The sounds that so startled him were quick shots, almost as steady as
volleys of musketry, and the terrible yell with which the Sioux charges
upon his enemy. Far down the valley the hunter could see sharp flashes
of fire pierce the cloud of dust that hung over the train of ox-carts,
and the dark