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Displaying his possessions with much pride, he assured Dechamp that he had paid for the whole outfit, and meant to return in the spring a rich man with means enough to buy a horse and cart, and start with the buffalo-hunters for the plains. "You have a horse to sell they say?" he remarked to his friend in a careless way. "Yes and a good one too," answered Dechamp.
This enormous area, then commonly called "The Saskatchewan," was unpeopled except for thousands of Indians, many groups of nomadic buffalo-hunters mostly half-breeds, a few scattered missions of various churches, and a large number of Hudson's Bay Company trading posts. Manitoba was under the oversight of a regularly constituted Government and Legislature.
And even as the interpreter told me their plea, one old brave caught my hand and pointed across to the enclosure, where a few captive buffalo were grazing. I knew what it meant. These, my Blackfeet, had been the great buffalo-hunters. With bow and arrow they had followed the herds from Canada to the Far South. These chiefs had been mighty hunters.
On a hill to the right I-sa-tai the medicine-man stood, all unclothed except for a bonnet of sage twigs. He was making medicine. The buffalo-hunters and the two or three freighters, the clerks and roustabouts and Saloon-keeper Hanrahan and Store-keeper Rath jammed their guns through every window and cranny fronting the charge, and waited.
Some of them there were, however, who, after lending a hand in this work, determined to provide second strings to their bows by following the buffalo-hunters to the plains. These were chiefly the young and strong men, such as Dan Davidson and his brother Peter, Fergus McKay, Antoine Dechamp, and Jacques Bourassin, among many others. La Certe also went, as well as his squaw and the four-year-old.
They arrived in Tombstone in the days when the outlaws were rampant, and they began dealing faro in Oriental. They found many a friend and some enemies from those years in western Kansas among the more adventurous element in the new town. Former buffalo-hunters, teamsters, quiet-spoken gamblers, and two-gun men sat down before their layouts and talked over bygones with them.
Although inexperienced, he knew well what to do, for many a time had he listened to the stories of buffalo-hunters in times past, and had put all their operations in practice with a wooden gun in mimic chase. But it was not easy to keep cool. He saw a fat animal just ahead of him, pushed close alongside; pointed his gun without raising it to his shoulder, and fired.
Twelve hundred men were employed on the railroad construction, and Goddard Brothers, who had undertaken to board the vast crew, were hard pressed to obtain fresh meat. To supply this indispensable, buffalo-hunters were employed, and as Will was known to be an expert buffalo-slayer, Goddard Brothers were glad to add him to their "commissary staff."
One or two of the buffalo-hunters exchanged words with us while Mac was building his cigarette and lighting it. Old Piegan stretched himself in the grass, and in a few moments was snoring energetically, his grizzled face bared to the cloudless sky. The camp grew still, except for the rough and ready cook pottering about the fire, boiling buffalo-meat and mixing biscuit-dough.
Others reclined against the wooden fence, their arms crossed, their thin white hair waving gently in the breeze, and a kind smile playing on their sunburned faces, as they observed the swagger and coxcombry of the younger men, or watched the gambols of several dark-eyed little children embryo buffalo-hunters and voyageurs whose mothers had brought them to the fort to get a last kiss from papa, and witness the departure of the boats.
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