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From Cicuye they went to Quivira, which after their account is almost three hundred leagues distant, through mighty plains, and sandy heaths so smooth and wearisome, and bare of wood that they made heaps of ox-dung, for want of stones and trees, that they might not lose themselves at their return: for three horses were lost on that plain, and one Spaniard which went from his company on hunting.... All that way of plains are as full of crooked-back oxen as the mountain Serrena in Spain is of sheep, but there is no such people as keep those cattle.... They were a great succour for the hunger and the want of bread, which our party stood in need of....
"The fact is," began Crooked-Back, "we have been informed that a crime has been committed here, and that the whole forest is being destroyed because the criminal has not been punished." "What kind of a crime was it?" "Some one killed a harmless creature that he couldn't eat. Such an act is accounted a crime in Liberty Forest." "Who could have done such a cowardly thing?" wondered Grayskin.
Shortly after that they met the four old elk Crooked-Back, Antler-Crown, Rough-Mane, and Big-and-Strong, who were coming along slowly, one after the other. "Well met in the forest!" called Grayskin. "Well met in turn!" answered the elk. "We were just looking for you, Grayskin, to consult with you about the forest."
"Yes, it looks bad," Karr agreed, "but I see that the wisest animals in the forest have come together to hold a consultation. Perhaps you have already found some remedy?" When the dog said this, Crooked-Back solemnly raised his heavy head, pricked up his long ears, and spoke: "We have summoned you hither, Karr, that we may learn if the humans know of this desolation."
Karr knew them: They were Crooked-Back, who was a small elk, but had a larger hump than the others; Antler-Crown, who was the most dignified of the elk; Rough-Mane, with the thick coat; and an old long-legged one, who, up till the autumn before, when he got a bullet in his thigh, had been terribly hot-tempered and quarrelsome. "What in the world is happening to the forest?"
He speaks in his records of "mighty plains and sandy heaths, smooth and wearisome and bare of wood. All the way the plains are as full of crooked-back oxen as the mountain Serena in Spain is of sheep." These crooked-back oxen were of course buffaloes, or, more correctly speaking, species of the American bison.
After two years of painful shifts and wanderings he was tracked down in France by a man known as Crooked-back Murray, and sent back to his fate. A third victim was James Guthrie, the most vehement and active of the Covenanters, the framer of the original Remonstrance and author of a seditious pamphlet called "The Causes of the Lord's Wrath."
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