Their faces were painted in the most glaring colors, their bright and many-colored blankets fluttered in the wind secured to the saddle only by an end or a corner, their long black hair streaming back like the pennant at the mast head of a ship, and their deep black eyes gleamed like coals of fire in a dungeon. Arrow after arrow flew from deep-strung bows and sunk to the feathered tip in the quivering flesh of the shaggy monsters.
Ponderous spears were hurled with the power and precision of giants and struck down the defenceless victims as a sturdy woodman strikes down the frail sapling in his path.
"Crack!" "crack!" came from rifles, and "ping!" "ping!" from carbines and revolvers. Hundreds of shots were fired by those who carried firearms, and before these murderous weapons, the poor bison sank like ripened grain before the reaper's blade.
One young warrior, more ardent and fearless than the rest, had forced his high-strung steed far into the midst of the solid phalanx, where the horse was finally impaled upon the horns of a monster bull. He and his rider were tossed like sheaves of wheat into the air; then both sank to earth, and were instantly trodden into the dust.
At last the great storm had passed, and our friends watched until it faded away in the distance and finally disappeared from their view.
Then came the squaws, the boys, and the old men, to dispatch the wounded and to skin and cut up the dead. These were strewn all over the prairie, and not a tithe of them were, or could be, saved by all the people, white and red, assembled there.
Our hunters returned to camp at sunset, where they met those of their companions who had been out during the afternoon, and over the evening camp fire, each related the thrilling incidents which he had witnessed, or in which he had participated during the day.
On the following morning they again started out in several parties of five or six each and going in various directions. Frank and the newspaper man started with three others, but soon separated from them to go after a small band which they had sighted about two miles south of camp.
When within a proper distance, they dismounted, picketed their horses in a swale, and stalking to within about a hundred yards opened fire. A young cow dropped at the first shot, to all appearances dead, and the remainder of the band scurried away, one old bull being badly wounded. The hunters started to run to the top of a ridge, over which the game had gone, to get another shot. As they passed the cow the guide called to his companion to look out for her, as she was only "creased" and liable to get up again and charge them. They had gone but a few rods, when, sure enough, she did spring to her feet and make a dash at Frank. He turned to shoot her, but his gun missed fire, and as he attempted to throw out the cartridge, the action failed to work, and his gun was, for the moment, disabled. By this time she was almost on him, and as his only means of escape, he sprang into a "washout" (a ditch that had been cut by the water, some ten feet deep), the sides of which were perpendicular.