things will run, and dropping on their knees, will push their noses under it and into the grass, where they will stand for hours, with their eyes shut, imagining themselves securely hid, whilst they are standing up quite straight upon their hind feet, and can easily be seen at several miles distance.  It is a familiar amusement with us, accustomed to these scenes, to retreat back over the ground where we have just escorted the herd, and approach these little trembling things, which stubbornly maintain their positions, with their noses pushed under the grass and their eyes strained upon us, us we dismount from our horses and are passing around them.  From this fixed position they are sure not to move until hands are laid upon them, and then for the shins of a novice we can extend our sympathy; or if he can preserve the skin on his bones from the furious buttings of its head, we know how to congratulate him on his signal success and good luck.

[Illustration:  From photograph of group in National Museum.  Engraved by R. H. Carson.  BUFFALO COW, CALF (FOUR MONTHS OLD), AND YEARLING.  Reproduced from the Cosmopolitan Magazine, by permission of the publishers.]

“In these desperate struggles for a moment, the little thing is conquered, and makes no further resistance.  And I have often, in concurrence with a known custom of the country, held my hands over the eyes of the calf and breathed a few strong breaths into its nostrils, after which I have, with my hunting companions, rode several miles into our encampment with the little prisoner busily following the heels of my horse the whole way, as closely and as affectionately as its instinct would attach it to the company of its dam.

“This is one of the most extraordinary things that I have met with in the habits of this wild country, and although I had often heard of it, and felt unable exactly to believe it, I am now willing to bear testimony to the fact from the numerous instances which I have witnessed since I came into the country.  During the time that I resided at this post [mouth of the Tetón River] in the spring of the year, on my way up the river, I assisted (in numerous hunts of the buffalo with the fur company’s men) in bringing in, in the above manner, several of these little prisoners, which sometimes followed for 5 or 6 miles close to our horse’s heels, and even into the fur company’s fort, and into the stable where our horses were led.  In this way, before I left the headwaters of the Missouri, I think we had collected about a dozen, which Mr. Laidlaw was successfully raising with the aid of a good milch cow."[27]

[Note 27:  North American Indians, I, 255.]