But almost the entire attention of the hunters was given to the buffalo.

After an evening spent in lounging round the campfire and a sound night's sleep, wrapped in robes and blankets, they would get up before daybreak, snatch a hurried breakfast, and start off in couples through the chilly dawn.

The great beasts were very plentiful; in the first day's hunt twenty were slain; but the herds were restless and ever on the move.

Sometimes they would be seen right by the camp, and again it would need an all-day's tramp to find them.

There was no difficulty in spying them--the chief trouble with forest game; for on the prairie a buffalo makes no effort to hide and its black, shaggy bulk looms up as far as the eye can see.
Sometimes they were found in small parties of three or four individuals, sometimes in bands of about two hundred, and again in great herds of many thousands; and solitary old bulls, expelled from the herds, were common.