Not far away on the prairie a band of buffalo bulls were feeding, and Old Man cried out to them, saying, “Oh, my brothers, help me, help me; stop that rock.”  The bulls ran and tried to stop it, butting against it, but it crushed their heads.  Some deer and antelope tried to help Old Man, but they too were killed.  Other animals came to help him, but could not stop the rock; it was now close to Old Man, so close that it began to hit his heels.  He was just going to give up when he saw circling over his head a flock of night-hawks.

“Oh, my little brothers,” he cried, “help me; I am almost dead.”  The bull bats flew down one after another against the rock, and every time one of them hit it he chipped off a piece, and at last one hit it fair in the middle and broke it into two pieces.

Then Old Man was glad.  He went to where there was a nest of night-hawks and pulled their mouths out wide and pinched off their bills, to make them pretty and queer looking.  That is the reason they look so to-day.

BEAR AND BULLBERRIES

Scattered over the prairie in northern Montana, close to the mountains, are many great rocks—­boulders which thousands of years ago, when the great ice-sheet covered northern North America, were carried from the mountains out over the prairie by the ice and left there when it melted.

Around most of these great boulders the buffalo used to walk from time to time, rubbing against the rough surface of the rock to scratch themselves, as a cow rubs itself against a post or as a horse rolls on the ground—­for the pleasant feeling that the rubbing of the skin gives it.

As the buffalo walked around these boulders their hoofs loosened the soil, and this loosened soil—­the dust—­was blown away by the constant winds of summer.  So, around most of these boulders, much of the soil is gone, leaving a deep trench, at the bottom of which are stones and gravel, too large to be moved by the wind.

This story explains how these rocks came to be like that: 

Once Old Man was crossing a river and the stream was deep, so that he was carried away by the current, and lost his bow and arrows and other weapons.  When he got to the shore he began to look about for something to use in making a bow and arrows, for he was hungry and wanted to kill some food.

He took the first wood he could find and made a bow and arrows and a handle for his knife.  When he had finished these things he started on his way.

Presently, as he looked over a hill he saw down below him a bear digging roots.  Old Man thought he would have some fun with the bear, and he called out aloud, “He has no tail.”  Then he dodged back out of sight.  The bear looked all about, but saw no one, and again began to dig roots.  Then Old Man again peeped over the hill and saw the bear at work, and again called out, “He has no tail.”  This time the bear looked up more quickly, but Old Man dodged down, and the bear did not see him, and pretty soon went on with his digging.