it back to the ranch. The calf would side up to the pony and follow
it along as if under the delusion that it was following its mother. The
man traded in cattle by picking up estrays and buying, for a song, those
that were footsore and sick, keeping them till in condition and then
selling them to passing trains that were in need.

We now began to see buffalo quite plentifully off to the southwest, in
small groups, and in droves of twenty or more. Sometimes hunters on
horseback, who had camped near Kearney, were indulging in the excitement
of the hunt, chasing and shooting, and in turn being chased by the
enraged animals. That evening we camped on the verge of the great herd
that extended some sixty or seventy miles to the westward, and blackened
the bluffs to the south, and the great plains beyond as far as the eye
could reach. This great herd was not a solid, continuous mass, but was
divided up into innumerable smaller herds or droves consisting of from
fifty to two hundred animals each. These kept together when grazing,
marching or running, the bulls on the outside and the cows and calves in
the center. Sometimes these small herds were separated from each other
by a considerable space.

This great herd had probably started northward from the Arkansas in the
spring and had now reached the Platte, where they lingered for water and
the better grass that was found along the river. Following in the wake
and prowling on the outskirts of this slowly moving host, were thousands
of wolves, collected from the distant plains, to feast upon the young
and the weakly, and the carcasses of those that were killed by accident
or the hunter's gun.

The turn for watching the cattle the first half of that night fell to
the lot of two of the boys from Chicago. The cattle were grazing in a
good meadow off toward the river, half a mile from camp. At dusk the
boys went off to take charge of them. After dark the wolves began to
howl in all directions and sometimes it sounded as if a hundred hungry
ones were fighting over a single carcass. Then the buffalo bulls chimed
in with the music and bellowed, apparently by thousands, at the same
time. Pandemonium seemed to reign. The two boys got nervous, then
frightened and finally panic-stricken, and long before midnight came
rushing into camp declaring that they were surrounded by droves of
hungry wolves and furious buffalo. The cattle were also disturbed and
inclined to scatter and wander off.