nhabited
valley, was to realize in every detail, a phase of the old-time life of
the plains. We moved in silence. The grass-hoppers springing with
clapping buzz before our horses' feet gave out the only sound. No other
living thing uttered voice. Nothing moved save our ponies and those
distant monstrous kine whose presence filled us with the same emotion
which had burned in the hearts of our pioneer ancestors.

As we drew nearer, clouds of dust arose like lazy smoke from smoldering
fires, curtains which concealed some mighty bull tossing the powdery
earth with giant hoof. The cows seeing our approach, began to shift and
change. The bulls did not hurry, on the contrary, they fell to the rear
and grimly halted our advance. Towers of alkali dust, hot and white,
lingering smoke-like in the air shielded us like a screen, and
so--slowly riding--we drew near enough to perceive the calves and hear
the mutter of the cows as they reenacted for us the life of the vanished
millions of their kind.

Here lay a calf beside its dam. Yonder a solitary ancient and shaggy
bull stood apart, sullen and brooding. Nearer a colossal chieftain,
glossy, black, and weighing two thousand pounds moved from group to
group, restless and combative, wrinkling his ridiculously small nose,
and uttering a deep, menacing, muttering roar. His rivals, though they
slunk away, gave utterance to similar sinister snarls, as if voicing
bitter resentment. They did not bellow, they _growled_, low down in
their cavernous throats, like angry lions. Nothing that I had ever heard
or read of buffaloes had given me the quality of this majestic clamor.

Occasionally one of them, tortured by flies, dropped to earth, and
rolled and tore the sod, till a dome of dust arose and hid him. Out of
this gray curtain he suddenly reappeared, dark and savage, like a dun
rock emerging from mist. One furious giant, moving with curling upraised
tail, challenged to universal combat, whilst all his rivals gave way,
reluctant, resentful, yet afraid. The rumps of some of the veterans were
as bare of hair as the loins of lions, but their enormous shoulders
bulked into deformity by reason of a dense mane. They moved like
elephants--clumsy, enormous, distorted, yet with astonishing celerity.

It was worth a long journey to stand thus and watch that small band of
bison, representatives of a race whose myriads once covered all America,
for though less than two hundred in number, they were feed