Read Into the Savage Country for Free Online Page A

direction of the encampment, like a coyote’s yips. We stashed our personals and leaped onto our horses. A moment after that there was a second keening and in an instant, all of us, at least a thousand men, started up the white hills on our horses.
    As we crested the highest of the hills we saw that the land to the north was as different from the alkali plains as Ireland is from the Sahara. Below us was a lush, grassy lowland, ringed by higher ridges, and in this lowland there were at least five hundred buffalo, unaware until that moment that they were surrounded by a thousand men on horseback in a giant, converging ring.
    As soon as the buffalo came in sight the natives began bellowing and caterwauling and a few fired their weapons. The buffalo leaped up and in an instant dashed off with a deafening thunder that literally shook the earth.
    At the far end of the valley, a few miles away, there was a second herd of buffalo almost as large as the one we were chasing, also trapped inside the ring. We could see this second herd, tiny wavering dots against green hills, moving silently toward us.
    The two groups of buffalo, the north and south herds, converged slowly, and after five minutes the two herds arrived on the same grassy plain. When the group of buffalo tried to turn, a pistol was fired. The men shouted and jeered and waved their arms. The buffalo ran on, the two herds nearing each other. They were a hundred yards apart, then fifty, then thirty, and then … a shrieking and grunting and shaking of the earth as the huge creatures struck one another. Beasts were sent dashing in every direction, spinning out, swirling, in a living, dusty explosion. Pegleg,Bridger, Branch, Ferris, and I, trying to keep ourselves equally spaced, charged toward the point of impact. A small herd of buffalo spun off in our direction. Thirty bulls. Gigantic, lumbering beasts, bearded, black-eyed, horned, the size of small elephants. The creatures tried to veer but were penned in by other beasts coming behind. Pegleg was at my side. He raised his weapon and, as he rode at full speed … Bang! He fired. One of the bulls in front of us fell and the charging beasts turned at the last moment and charged back in the direction they’d come.
    Hundreds of arrows were flying and rifles were detonating and flickering all up and down the line. I raised my gun and entered a chaos of men and beasts and dust and smoke. I could hear voices in many different languages, yelling and cursing and crying out. Beasts swirled around us and among them men were shooting and spearing and hacking and stabbing and slashing. A desperate native with a broken arm, on foot, dashed about among the beasts. I made a grab for him but he was swept away.
    A minute later I found myself on the crest of a low hill. I realized I had never discharged my weapon. Beneath me, in all directions, the bulls were rearing and snorting and charging off, pursued by natives and trappers alike. Men tagged the skins of dispatched buffalo with slashes from their blades, then aimed their weapons at the countless wolves that had slunk into the killing fields. In all directions women were gutting and skinning the great beasts. I saw Red Elk disputing with one of the Gros Ventre who apparently believed the bull Red Elk marked to be his kill. I saw Red Elk finish marking the beast then turn and very calmly smack the Gros Ventre across the skull with his cudgel. Afterward, the Gros Ventre lay alongside the beast, unmoving.
    In another direction, near a shrub-lined drainage, a short,squat trapper with a handlebar mustache paced about a buffalo that had so many arrows sticking from it that it resembled a porcupine. This was a free trapper named Max Grignon with his companion Bouchet. The two were trying to provoke the injured beast into chasing them. Bouchet grabbed its tail and Grignon was jabbing its side with a section of spear he’d found. When Grignon stuck the blade in, the poor creature writhed and