THE UPWARD TRAIL Once across the Missouri the trail began to mount.

"Here is the true buffalo country," thought Mose, as they came to the treeless hills of the Great Muddy Water.

On these smooth buttes Indian sentinels had stood, morning and evening, through a thousand years, to signal the movement of the wild herds, and from other distant hills columns of smoke by day, or the flare of signal fires at night, had warned the chieftains of the approach of enemies.

Down these grassy gulches, around these sugar-loaf mesas, the giant brown cattle of the plains had crawled in long, dark, knobby lines.

On the green bottoms they had mated and fed and fought in thousands, roaring like lions, their huge hoofs flinging the alkaline earth in showers above their heads, their tongues curling, their tails waving like banners.
Mose was already deeply learned in all these dramas.