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Their eyes, however, were not so useless as their ears, for they could clearly see each warrior as he rose to harangue his comrades, and, from the vindictive expression of their faces as well as their frequent pointing in the direction of the buffalo-hunters it was abundantly evident that an attack upon them was being discussed.
Still, on the strength of them, Victor and Ian resolved to continue the chase, and Rollin agreed to follow. Thus the summer and autumn passed away. Meanwhile a terrible disaster had befallen the buffalo-hunters of the Red River.
I have myself seen Indian braves with half a score of scalps dangling from their belts, and others with no end of nicks in their rifle stocks to indicate the number they had slain. Buffalo-hunters from the white and half-breed settlements by the Red and the Assiniboine Rivers only ventured westward in large companies heavily armed.
They were shooting from two hundred yards but that was a dead range for the white men's guns. The buffalo-hunters asked nothing better. Their rifles were sighted to a hair. The hunters were accustomed to lie all day, on the buffalo range, and from their "stand" to leeward plant bullet after bullet of their Sharp's .50-120, Ballard .45-90, and Winchester .44-40 behind the buffalo's shoulders.
The American people as a whole do not realize that the domestic sheep has driven the domestic steer from the free grass of the wild West, with the same speed and thoroughness with which the buffalo-hunters of the 70's and 80's swept away the bison.
These buffalo-hunters had among them some of the coolest and best marksmen in the country. Singling out the boldest of those who advanced, and were encouraging their followers in the final charge, Boezac and his men laid low many of the bravest chiefs and warriors. This gave the Kafirs a decided check. The troops cheered and fired with redoubled speed and energy.
So the Military Department of the Missouri seemed a little more quiet; a few bands of outlaw Indians still roved in southwestern Kansas, southern Colorado, New Mexico and northern Texas, but the buffalo-hunters again established their camps as they pleased.
Morse knew it, though he had never met McRae. His reputation had gone all over the Northland as a fearless fighting man honest as daylight and stern as the Day of Judgment. If this girl was a daughter of the old Scot, not even a whiskey-trader could safely lay hands on her. For back of Angus was a group of buffalo-hunters related to him by blood over whom he held half-patriarchal sway.
He rode in the parade at Washington when Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated President. President Roosevelt paid him a return visit, for a wolf hunt. But the old-time buffalo-hunters who were in Adobe Walls on June 24, 1874, never have forgotten that charge by the Quana Parker fierce cavalry.
Rath, and her husband, and Saloon-keeper Hanrahan, and two or three Mexican clerks and roustabouts, they mainly were buffalo-hunters. Billy Dixon, government scout, was in with his wagon and outfit; he expected to start for his camp, twenty-five miles south, in the morning. The Shadley brothers and their freighter outfit were here. And likewise some twenty others.
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