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: in. Buffalo. As we were drawing near the buffalo range preparations were made for a chase. The pistols were freshly loaded and butcher knives sharpened. One morning about 9 o'clock, on Turkey creek, a branch of the Cottonwood, we came in eight of buffalo, in a great mass, stretching out over the prairie as far as the eye could reach, though the topography of the country enabled us to see for several miles in each direction. The prairie in front of us was gradually undulating, but offered no great hindrance to fast riding. Reece and I were anxious to try our skill, and Captain Chiles, said he would go along to assist in butchering and bringing up the meat; but, as he was riding a mule, he could not be expected to take an active part in the chase. Reece was mounted on his splendid iron gray and I on my trained buffalo horse, each of us having a pair of Coifs navy revolvers, of six chambers in holsters. We rode slowly until we got within three or four hundred yards of the edge of the vast herd. Then they began to run and we followed, gaining on them all the time. Pressing forward, at the full speed of my horse, I discovered that the whole band just in front of me were old bulls, I was so anxious to kill a buffalo that I began shooting at a very large one, occasionally knocking tufts of hair off his coat, but apparently having little other effect. However,after a lively run of perhaps a mile or two he slackened his pace, and at last stopped still and, turning about, faced me. I fired the one or two remaining charges of my revolvers, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards, and thought he gave evidence of being mortally wounded. After gazing steadily at me for a few minutes he turned around and walked off. I followed, but presently he resumed a gallop in the direction the main…
