The old hunter showed his men how to butcher the buffalo, pulling them on their bellies, if they had not died thus, and splitting the hide down the back, to make a receptacle for the meat as it was dissected; showed them how to take out the tongue beneath the jaw, after slitting open the lower jaw.  He besought them not to throw away the back fat, the hump, the boss ribs or the intestinal boudins; in short, gave them their essential buffalo-hunting lessons.  Then he turned for camp, he himself having no relish for squaw’s work, as he called it, and well assured the wagons would now have abundance.

Banion and Jackson, with their followers, held their hunt some miles below the scene of Bridger’s chase, and had no greater difficulty in getting among the herds.

“How’re ye ridin’, Will?” asked Jackson before they mounted for the start from camp.

Banion slapped the black stallion on the neck.

“Not his first hunt!” said he.

“I don’t mean yore hoss, but yore shootin’ irons.  Whar’s yore guns?”

“I’ll risk it with the dragoon revolvers,” replied Banion, indicating his holsters.  “Not the first time for them, either.”

“No?  Well, maybe-so they’ll do; but fer me, I want a hunk o’ lead.  Fer approachin’ a buffler, still-huntin’, the rifle’s good, fer ye got time an’ kin hold close.  Plenty o’ our men’ll hunt thataway to-day, an’ git meat; but fer me, give me a hunk o’ lead.  See here now, I got only a shotgun, cap an’ ball, fourteen gauge, she is, an’ many a hide she’s stretched.  I kerry my bullets in my mouth an’ don’t use no patchin’—­ye hain’t got time, when ye’re runnin’ in the herd.  I let go a charge o’ powder out’n my horn, clos’t as I kin guess hit, spit in a bullet, and roll her home on top the powder with a jar o’ the butt on top my saddle horn.  That sots her down, an’ she holds good enough to stay in till I ram the muzzle inter ha’r an’ let go.  She’s the same as meat on the fire.”

“Well,” laughed Banion, “you’ve another case of de gustibus, I suppose.”

“You’re another, an’ I call it back!” exclaimed the old man so truculently that his friend hastened to explain.

“Well, I speak Blackfoot, Crow, Bannack, Grow Vaw, Snake an’ Ute,” grumbled the scout, “but I never run acrost no Latins out here.  I allowed maybe-so ye was allowin’ I couldn’t kill buffler with Ole Sal.  That’s what I keep her fer—­just buffler.  I’ll show ye afore long.”

And even as Bridger had promised for his favorite weapon, he did prove beyond cavil the efficiency of Old Sal.  Time after time the roar or the double roar of his fusee was heard, audible even over the thunder of the hoofs; and quite usually the hunk of lead, driven into heart or lights, low down, soon brought down the game, stumbling in its stride.  The old halfbreed style of loading, too, was rapid enough to give Jackson as many buffalo as Bridger’s bow had claimed before his horse fell back and the dust cloud lessened in the distance.