The Dawson journal. (Dawson, Ga.) 1878-18??, 1884-06-26
An Exciting Buffalo Hunt.


or the Laramie Plains, buffalo
were as common as the antelope
are there now, and on a good day
you will see 800 to 500 antelope in
ride from Laramie City to Last
Chance and back.
Now, however, the buffalo have
taken their flight from Southern
Wyoming and drifted to the North
west, where they can still be slain
for few more years. The day is
not distant, | fear, when we will
only have one buffalo apiece for
the foreign dudes who come to our
coasts to regain their health and
marry our heiresses.
We were rather startled one
day in Laramie by the howl of
buffalo" on the streets, not long
ago. Inquiring into the matter, I
found that the game had been
sighted across the river, not over
three miles from town. Every
body was wild. In ten minutes
the livery stables were empty and
every man with a team had load
of excited men moving toward the
herd.
1t was a grand exodus, and for a
mile or two it looked like a mass
meeting. There were two OF three
guns and perhaps wentyrevolvers
in the party. Some of Us were in
express wagons, some in drays
and some in carriages. We hur-
ried on excitingly until the ad
vance guard set up a wild yell,
which meant that the game was in
sight and that no one in that crowd
had ever seen a buffalo before.
Everyone's eyes were strained
to get a glimpse of the herd
Every one held his breath, waiting
for the thunder and dust STAN
pede. I had just decided that the
whole thing was a sell when one Of
the party pointed out at little
distance on the foot of hill to
our right a buffalo. This was our
prey. One hundred and fifty of
us, like an army with transfers,
had come out here on the plains to
slaughter this melancholy brute.
He was trying to eat when we hove
in sight, and was doing as well,
perhaps, as any old buffalo could
without teeth. He had worn most
of his hair off when the country
was new and it had neglected to
grow again. His ears had been
gnawed by coyotes and theravages
of time till they had fringe en-
them over an inch deep. His
back looked like one of these old
fashioned hair trunks, and his lit
tie tive-cent tail had aboutas much
hair on the end as a ramrod in full
bloom. [ never saw such a sad
looking face. It had an expression
of deep seated woe and pain and
surprise, such as a man has when
a five story brick warehouse falls
on him. He had that same griev-
ed, sorrowful look of reproach that
man might wear if he were to
leap a nine rail fence in the sol
emn hush of the night and fall in
to the embrace of a bull dog in the
prime of life.
The old bull raised his head in
a solemn way and tried to snort as
he used to in the early history of
the country, but it was a failure.
He then tried to raise his tail but
it was failure. He then tried to
raise his tail and lash his sides
with it, but the effort was not
crowned with success. His tail
had forgotten its cunning.
He then tried to flash his eve,
but it wouldn't flash. He turned
slowly around and, as we'll as the
poor old foundered brute could,he
tried to amble away. Then a
brave man from the cultivated
East, wearing a new suit of buck
skin that he had Just bought, rode
f7arlessly up to the old bull and
filled him full of buckshot from
the muzzle of a two dollar gun.
The veteran of the plains fell
with half below, half groan and
died. He would have died in a
few days anyhow. 1t was an ex-
citing hunt.
The man who assassinated that
feeble old bull was at once named
the Buffalo slayer, and he had to
go somewhere else to get work. |
don't know why it is considered
such big thing to kill buffalo.
1t is far more difficult to kill a
good, abled bodied elk or deer [
saw an Englishman at the Palmer
House last Summer who had, no
doubt, failed to find buffalo do
clle enough to stand still and be
shot so he was carrying home to
Merry England the bleached and
decay skull of buffalo killed fifty
| years ago, perhaps. Yes, sir, he
| Was c.rr,,t4trr {lot +b;,,o < nO0