If hit they usually succeed in getting underground
before they can be recovered.
Rattlesnakes and little owls are found in great numbers in the
prairie-dog towns, living in the same burrows. We killed and cooked a
few of the prairie-dogs, and found them very palatable.
A short distance beyond the prairie-dog town we found a settlement of
five white men. They Proved to be the two Clifford brothers, Arthur
Ruff, Dick Seymour, and John Nelson. To the last I have already
referred. Each of these men had a squaw for a wife and numerous
half-breed children. They lived in tents of buffalo skins. They owned a
herd of horses and a few cattle, and had cultivated a small piece of
land. Their principal occupation was hunting, and they had numbers of
buffalo hides, which they had tanned in the Indian fashion.
Upon reaching Pleasant Valley on Medicine Creek the party divided into
two detachments, one hunting along the bank of the creek for elk and
deer, the other remaining with the main body of the escort.
The elk hunters met with no success whatever, but the others found
plenty of buffaloes and nearly everybody killed one before the day was
done. Lawrence Jerome made an excellent shot. He was riding in an
ambulance, and killed a buffalo that attempted to cross the line of
march. Upon crossing the Republican River on the morning of the
twenty-sixth we came upon an immense number of buffaloes scattered over
the country in every direction.
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