three hundred miles from
here."

"If only there were the buffalo!" said Jesse.

"Yes, if only there were the buffalo, and the antelope and the Indians!
I'd give a good deal to have lived in those days, my own self. Good
night, Jess. Good night, Rob and Frank."

CHAPTER XIV

IN DAYS OF OLD

The young travelers each night made their beds carefully, for they long
since had learned that unless a man sleeps well he cannot enjoy the next
day's work. It has been noted that they had three buffalo robes for part
of their bedding, one each for Uncle Dick and Rob, while John and Jesse
shared one between them. In the morning Uncle Dick noted that the latter
two boys had their robe spread down with the hair side up.

"I suppose you did that to get more of a mattress?" he said. "But
suppose you wanted to keep warm in really cold weather, in a snowstorm,
say. Which side of the robe would you wear outside?"

"Why, the smooth side, of course!" replied Jesse, who was rolling the
robe. "That'd have the warm fur next to you, so you'd be warmer that
way."

"No, there's where you are wrong," said his uncle. "The old-timers
always slept with the hair outside, and the Indians wore their robes
that way. 'Buffalo know how to wear his hide!' is the way an Indian put
it. And, you see, a buffalo always did wear his hair outside! Next to
the musk ox, he was the hardiest animal on this continent and could
stand the most cold. No blizzards on these plains ever troubled him. He
could get feed when other animals starved."

"He'd paw down through the snow to the grass," said Jesse.

"Again you are wrong. A horse paws snow. The buffalo threw the snow
aside with his hairy jaws or his whole head--he rooted for the grass!"

"Well, I didn't know that."

"A good many things are now forgotten," said his friend. "Writers and
artists and even scientists quite often are wrong. For instance, in
pictures you almost always see the herd led by the biggest buffalo bull.
In actual fact it was always an old cow that led the herd. The bulls
usually were at the rear, to defend against wolves. And when a buffalo
ran, he ran into the wind, not downwind, like the deer. Few remember
that now.

"Take the antelope, too. The old hunters always knew that the antelope
shed his horns, same as a deer, but scientists denied that for years,
because they didn't happen to see any shed horns. I have had an antelope
buck's horn pull off in my hand, in the month of