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The
buffaloes
came rushing past me not a hundred yards distant, with the officers about
three hundred yards in the rear. Now, thought I, is the time to "get
my work in," as they say; and I pulled off the blind bridle from my horse,
who knew as well as I did that we were out after
buffaloes,
as he was a trained hunter. The moment the bridle was off he started
at the top of his speed, running in ahead of the officers, and with a few
jumps he brought me alongside the rear
buffalo.
Raising old Lucretia Borgia to my shoulder, I fired, and killed the animal
at the first shot. My horse then carried me alongside the next one,
not ten feet away, and I dropped him at the next fire.
As
soon as one of the
buffalo
would fall, Brigham would take me so close to the next that I could almost
touch it with my gun. In this manner I killed the eleven
buffaloes
with twelve shots; and as the last animal dropped, my horse stopped.
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The Great Plains once had an estimated twenty
million buffalo, photo courtesy Library of Congress.
This image available for photographic prints
HERE!
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I jumped off to the ground, knowing that
he would not leave me--it must be remembered that I had been riding
him without bridle, reins, or saddle--and, turning around as the party
of astonished officers rode up, I said to them:
"Now, gentlemen, allow me to present to
you all the tongues and tenderloins you wish from these
buffaloes."
Captain Graham, for such I soon learned
was his name, replied: "Well, I never saw the like before. Who
under the sun are you, anyhow?"
"My name is Cody," said I.
Captain Graham, who was considerable of a
horseman, greatly admired Brigham, and said: "That horse of yours has
running points."
"Yes, sir; he has not only got the points,
he is a runner
and knows how to use the points," said I.
"So I noticed," said the captain.
They all finally dismounted, and we
continued chatting for some little time upon the different subjects of
horses,
buffaloes, hunting, and
Indians. They felt a little sore at not getting a single
shot at the
buffaloes; but the way I had killed them, they said, amply repaid
them for their disappointment. They had read of such feats in
books, but this was the first time they had ever seen anything of the
kind with their own eyes. It was the first time, also, that they
had ever witnessed or heard of a white man running
buffaloes on horseback without a saddle or bridle.
I told them that Brigham knew nearly as
much about the business as I did, and if I had twenty bridles they
would have been of no use to me, as he understood everything, and all
that he expected of me was to do the shooting. It is a fact that
Brigham would stop if a
buffalo did not
fall at the first fire, so as to give me a
second chance; but if I did not kill the animal then, he would go on,
as if to say, "You are no good, and I will not fool away my time by
giving you more than two shots." Brigham was the best horse I
ever saw or owned for
buffalo chasing.
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At one time an old, experienced
buffalo
hunter was following at the heels of a small herd with that reckless rush
to which in the excitement of the chase men abandon themselves, when a
great bull
just in front of him tumbled into a ravine.
The rider's horse fell also, throwing the old hunter over his head
sprawling, but with strange accuracy right between the bull's horns!
The first to recover from the terrible shock and to regain his legs was
the horse, which ran off with wonderful alacrity several miles before he
stopped. Next the bull rose, and shook himself with an astonished air, as
if
he would like to know "how that was done?"
The hunter was on the great brute's back, who, perhaps, took the affair as
a good practical joke; but he was soon pitched to the ground, as the
buffalo
commenced to jump "stiff-legged," and the latter, giving the hunter one
lingering look, which he long remembered, with remarkable good nature ran
off to join his companions. Had the bull been wounded, the rider
would have been killed, as the then enraged animal would have gored and
trampled him to death.
An officer of the old regular army told me
many years ago that in crossing the plains a herd of
buffalo
were fired at by a twelve-pound howitzer, the ball of which wounded and
stunned an immense bull.
Nevertheless, heedless of a hundred shots that
had been fired at him, and of a bulldog belonging to one of the officers,
which had fastened himself to his lips, the enraged beast charged upon the
whole troop
of dragoons, and tossed one of the horses like
a feather. Bull, horse, and rider all fell in a heap. Before
the dust cleared away, the trooper, who had hung for a moment to one of
the bull's horns
by his waistband, crawled out safe, while the
horse got a ball from a rifle through his neck while in the air and two
great rips in his flank from the bull.
In 1839
Kit Carson
and Hobbs were trapping with a party on the
Arkansas
River, not far from Bent's Fort. Among the trappers was a green
Irishman, named O'Neil, who was quite anxious to become
proficient in hunting, and it was not long
before he received his first lesson. Every man who went out of camp
after game was expected to bring in "meat" of some kind. O'Neil said
that he would agree
to the terms, and was ready one evening to
start out on his first hunt alone. He picked up his rifle and
stalked after a small herd of
buffalo
in plain sight on the prairie not more than five or six hundred yards from
camp.
All the trappers who were not engaged in
setting their traps or cooking supper were watching O'Neil.
Presently they heard the report of his rifle, and shortly after he came
running into camp, bareheaded,
without his gun, and with a
buffalo
bull close upon his heels; both going at full speed, and the Irishman
shouting like a madman, "Here we come, by jabers. Stop us! For
the love of God, stop us!"
Just as they came in among the tents, with the
bull not more than six feet in the rear of O'Neil, who was frightened out
of his wits and puffing like a locomotive, his foot caught in a tent-rope,
and
over he went into a puddle of water head
foremost, and in his fall capsized several camp-kettles, some of which
contained the trappers' supper. But the
buffalo
did not escape so easily; for Hobbs and
Kit Carson
jumped for their rifles, and dropped the animal before he had done any
further damage.
The whole outfit laughed heartily at O'Neil
when he got up out of the water, for a party of old trappers would show no
mercy to any of their companions who met with a mishap of that character;
but
as he stood there with dripping clothes and
face covered with mud, his mother-wit came to his relief and he declared
he had accomplished the hunter's task: "For sure," said he, "haven't I
fetched the mate
into camp? and there was no bargain whether it
should be dead or alive!"
Upon
Kit's
asking O'Neil where his gun was,
"Sure," said he, "that's more than I can tell
you."
Next morning
Carson
and Hobbs took up O'Neil's tracks and the
buffalo's,
and after hunting an hour or so found the Irishman's rifle, though he had
little use for it afterward, as he preferred to cook
and help around camp rather than expose his
precious life fighting
buffaloes.
A great herd of
buffaloes
on the plains in the early days, when one could approach near enough
without disturbing it to quietly watch its organization and the apparent
discipline which its leaders seemed to exact, was a very curious sight.
Among the striking features of the spectacle was the apparently uniform
manner in which the immense mass of shaggy animals moved; there was
constancy of action indicating a degree of intelligence to be found only
in the most intelligent of the brute creation. Frequently the single
herd was broken up into many smaller ones, that travelled relatively close
together, each led by an independent master. Perhaps a few rods only
marked the dividing-line between them, but it was always unmistakably
plain, and each moved synchronously in the direction in which all were
going.
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