broad statement," said Jack, after Smith had
gone. "I believe, if there was a good reward offered, that I
could find a Mexican who isn't afraid of dogs. Though perhaps
it's the hair they're afraid of; Mexican dogs don't have any, you
know."

"Don't any of them have hair?" asked Ollie.

"Not a hair," answered his truthful uncle. "I don't suppose a
Mexican dog would know a hair if he saw it."

"I think that's a bigger story than Smith's," said Ollie.

It was Sunday, and we spent most of the day in the wagon,
though we took a long walk up the valley in the afternoon. The
first thing Ollie said the next morning was, "When are we going
to see the buffaloes?"

Smith had been telling us about them the evening before. They
were down-town, and belonged to a Dr. McGillicuddie. They had
been brought in recently from the Rosebud Indian Agency, and had
been captured some time before in the Bad Lands.

We followed the trail, now as deep with mud as it had been
with dust, meeting many freighters on the way, and found the
buffaloes near the Deadwood stage barn.

"See!" exclaimed Ollie; "there they are, in the yard."

"Don't say 'yard,'" returned Jack; "say 'corral,' with a
good, strong accent on the last syllable. A yard is a corral, and
a farm a ranch, and a revolver a six-shooter--and a lot more.
Don't be green, Oliver."

"Oh, bother!" replied Ollie. "There's ten of 'em. See the big
fellow!"

"They're nice ones, that's so," answered Jack. "I'd like to
see the Yankton man we heard about try to milk that cow over in
the corner."

[Illustration: Post-Mortem on a Grizzly]

After we had seen the buffaloes we wandered about town and
jingled our spurs, which were quite in the fashion. We
encountered a big crowd in front of one of the markets, and found
that a hunter had just come in from the mountains to the west
with the carcass of the biggest bear ever brought into Rapid
City. Some said it was a grizzly, and others a silvertip, and one
man tried to settle the difficulty by saying that there wasn't
any difference between them. But it was certainly a big bear, and
filled the whole wagon-box. Ollie sidled through the crowd and
asked so many questions of the man, who was named Reynolds, that
he good-naturedly gave Ollie one of the largest of the claws. It
was five inches long.

At noon we went down to the camp of the freighters on the
outskirts of town, near Rapid Creek. There must have been fifty
"out