As far as the eye could reach the prairie was covered with a multitude of great, dark animals, grazing on the short, sweet grass.

Near by these animals, as Paul saw, were a few feet apart, but further on they seemed to blend into one solid, black, but heaving mass.
"A real buffalo herd," said Henry.
Paul had seen buffaloes often in Kentucky, but there they were usually in small groups of a dozen or so, owing to the wooded nature of the country, and now he looked for the first time upon a great herd, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, maybe more--one could not calculate.

The spectacle appealed greatly to his imaginative temperament.
"What a grand sight!" he said.
"Yes," said Henry, "it is wonderful, but, Paul, this is nothing to what you can see on the great plains.

When I was a captive with the northwestern Indians I've seen a herd that was passing our party all day, and it was also so wide you could not see across it." They stood there some time looking.

The huge, savage bulls were on the outskirts of the herd, and just beyond them at the fringe of the forest were snarling timber wolves, waiting for a chance to drag down some careless calf, or a bull weakened to the last degree by old age.
As the two youths looked they heard a shot and saw a movement among the buffaloes.