Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ANIMALS THE BUFFALO FRANCIS PARKMAN BRINGING HOME THE MEAT Four days on the Platte, and yet no buffalo The wagons one morning had left the camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still sat cross-legged' by the dead embers of the fire, playing pensively with the lock of his rifle, .-, while his sturdy Wyandot pony stood quietly behind him, looking over his head. At last he got up, patted the neck of the pony (whom, from an exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had christened Five Hundred Dollar), and then mounted with a melancholy air. to What is it, Henry? ''Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black?all black with buffalo In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an ante- is lope; until, at the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall white wagons and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so slowly advancing that they seemed motionless; and far on the left rose the broken line of scorched, desolate sandMlls. The vast plain waved with tall rank grass that swept our horses' bellies; it swayed to and fro in billows with the light breeze, and far and near, antelope and wolves were moving through it, the hairy backs of the latter alternately appearing and dis- 5 appearing as they bounded awkwardly along; while the antelope, with the simple curiosity peculiar to them, would often approach us closely, their little horns and white throats just visible above the grass tops as they gazed eagerly at us with their round, black eyes. 10 I dismounted, and amused myself with firing at the wolves. Henry attentively scrutinized the surrounding landscape; at length he gave a shout, and called on me to mount again, pointing ...