t's the big-horn sheep."

"He seems to be disappearing from certain sections, like the buffalo
from the country," remarked Garrison.

"There's plenty of 'em in the mountains of Arizona and old Mexico, and
I've no doubt there's thousands of 'em in the Wind River and other parts
of the Rockies, but it's mighty hard to find 'em. Then there's the black
wolf."

"Is he fiercer than the gray one?"

"He's ten times worse. Whenever he meets the gray wolf he tears him to
smithereens. You never seen a wolf of any kind that wasn't as hungry as
you younkers was yesterday."

"He couldn't be any hungrier," said Fred, with a laugh.

"I have knowed one of them critters to foller a steamboat down the upper
Missouri fur two days and nights, howling and watching fur a chance to
git something to eat."

"The buffaloes have disappeared."

"The right name of the animal is the bison," suggested Garrison; "they
have been slaughtered in pure wantonness. It is a crime, the way in
which they have been extirpated."

"There are a few of 'em left, deep among the mountains," said Hazletine,
"where no one has happened to find 'em, but it won't be long afore
they'll all be wiped out. Do you know," he added, indignantly, "that
last year our boys found a herd of eighteen buffaloes some miles back in
the mountains. Wal, sir, we was that tickled that we made up our minds
to watch 'em and see that they wasn't interfered with. We kept track of
'em purty well till their number had growed to twenty-four. Then one
afternoon a party of gentlemen hunters, as they called themselves, from
the States, stumbled onto 'em. Wal, as true as I'm a settin' here, they
s'rounded that herd and never stopped shooting till they killed every
one of 'em!"

The cowman was so angry that he smoked savagely at his pipe for a minute
in silence. His friends shared his feelings, and Kansas Jim remarked:

"Hank and me hunted two days fur them folks, and if we'd have got the
chance to draw bead on 'em not all of 'em would have got home. Why, the
rapscallions just shot the whole twenty-four, and left 'em laying on the
ground. They didn't even take their hides. If there ever was such a
thing as murder that was."

"Yes," assented Garrison; "and although the Government is doing all it
can to protect the few in Yellowstone Park, somebody is continually
shooting into the herd. The bison will soon be an extinct animal."

"It's too bad, but I don't see that we can help it," observed