Fold the buffalo bull was the King Beast of the Prairie. Who was there but man to dispute his sovereignty? The bull elk carried a pair of horns like the branches of an oak and the mustang stallion could kick like a hurricane, but the buffalo bull weighed two thousand pounds as he stood in his tracks, and the biggest elk or mustang that ever stepped was as a child's toy beside him. Old Ephraim, the grizzly, might indeed have made a hard tussle for it with his terrible claws and fangs, but his surly strength mostly chose to expend itself in other directions-too many of his ancestors had had their ribs driven in by a pair of strong sharp horns set in a head of adamant for him to take any chances, and he preferred to give best to the bull baffalo without a fight. As for the rest of the animals, they followed the example of their betters, and left the King of the Prairie severely alone, only the lank grey wolf sneaked in the rear of the herds, where

battle and old age and lightning flash and tempest provided victims enough to keep the hunger-bitten scavenger of the prairies from starvation. And so the millions of buffalo lived on, proud and happy, generation after generation, until the last quarter of the last century.

Then the white men built their railroads into the heart of the buffalo country, and, armed with Sharps rifles and Winchesters, they poured forth in their thousands to finish him off. It took them scarce fifteen years to do it, but I am proud to think that I, John Kimber, of Bijou Basin, had neither part nor lot in that slaughter. I had my ranch and my cowboys, and my herd of cattle, and that was good enough for me. What should I want to fly around for, trying to earn a few paltry dollars as a hide hunter, when from my hardy Texas cows and splendid shorthorn bulls I could raise year by year the very finest kind of improved steers to sell to the miners in the mountains? My cattle fattened themselves summer and winter on an untouched range forty miles across; how could they help fattening when on Squirrel Creek

they had the run of the very best buffalo and grama grass, the strongest and sweetest feed that ever grew out of doors? Thousands of buffalo grew fat there on it in the old days, and it was there that I ran on to the very last buffalo I ever saw or expect to see alive outside of a menagerie. There had been no buffalo on the range for years, and this was a magnificent old bull, whom I found absolutely alone. If I was no slayer of the buffalo, I knew right well their nature and their ways, and I knew what had brought him there away from the rest of his kind. It was here on Black Squirrel Creek that his mother had borne him as a calf, and here first he had drunk at the clear cool springs, and cropped the short curly buffalo grass almost at the foot of Pike's Peak. From this range

in the great migration of his tribe he had swung north to the Republican and the Platte and south to the Arkansas and the Cimarron. As he grew older he fought his way up in many a desperate struggle with rival after rival till he proudly trod the earth the unquestioned master of his band. His huge frame developed and his thews and sinews became as iron. His great hump and neck and head were clad in a rough mass of shaggy mane, the wealth of his thick dewlap almost swept the ground. His reign lasted many a long year and he was every inch a king. But lately there had come a day (as it must come to all of us) when his muscles were less elastic and his breath was shorter than of yore. That day a younger bull, one of his own sons perchance, now in the very prime and flower of his age, equal to the monarch in weight and strength, superior in quickness and in wind, had challenged him to mortal combat. They had fought for hours, round after round, pushing and thrusting, butting and horning, till both were fairly spent and almost foredone. But youth will be served, as they say in the ring; the younger lasted longer and came off victor in the end.

Deeply the vanquished champion felt his disgrace; before the very eyes of his cows and of his heifers he saw himself put to utter shame. Sullen and savage

he withdrew, and passed the night alone for the first time, nursing his wrath. Tomorrow he would be rested; to-morrow he would seek his insolent rival again, and he would win, or else die fighting, fit end for a warrior. To-morrow came and the combat was renewed. Alas for the old hero! he could neither win nor die. For the second time his more youthful and vigorous rival fought him to a standstill and left him helpless and exhausted, yet with his life whole in him.

The triumphant victor moved off proudly over the hill, accompanied by the faithless band; the fallen champion saw himself deserted, and he laid himself down, longing for the death that would not come. There, as he lay, thoughts of his lusty youth came back to him; he remembered the cool springs of Black Squirrel Creek and the sweet pastures where he was born, and he desired to taste of them once more. There was virtue for him in those crystal waters, and with the strong rich grama oats of the sand hills he would renew his youth; his lost vigor would surely come back; after that he would return once more and find the band-his band-and then the presuming upstart who had supplanted him should learn what he still could do. With the thought he felt his strength revive a little; he struggled to his feet; he turned his shaggy front towards Black Squirrel Creek; never since his calfhood had he forgotten the exact direction in which lay the place where he was reared, and thitherward he pushed steadily ahead. And stealthily behind him and on either flank skulked half a dozen lank grey buffalo wolves following. He

not condescend to notice them. He had disdained them all his life; why should he now stoop to give them a thought? He did not consider that now for the first time he was alone, stiff and weak from his great battle, with a red gash on n.s side left by his rival's horns, nor knew he that the hungry wolves had smelt his blood. On, on, he pushed, following an old and once well-traveled road that in their migration the buffalo had made; it ran from the Republican to Big Sandy, from Big Sandy to Rush Creek, and from