Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. Two hundred and three Killed at One Time.--How We Skinned Buffalo.--I Saw a Panther.--Cyrus Saw a Bear.--I Killed an Eagle.-- A Great, Moving Mass of Buffalo.--I Kill a Cougar.--Hickey, the Hide-buyer.--Cyrus Meets a, Bear.--The Wounded Panther.-- The Weird Night Watch.--Left Alone--On Meat Straight, Fourteen Days. Dockum and I for the first few days worked together. We 'two skinned thirty-three of this killing. Hadley and Cyrus worked together for a short time. It was now a busy time. Some days thirty and forty-odd hides, then a good day with eighty-five, and one day in February, one hundred and seventy-one; then again the same month, 203; and these 203 were killed on less than ten acres of ground. My experience with the Woods had helped me. In starting I had learned to keep my knives in good order and how to handle and manipulate them. But it was here I learned to simplify, lighten, and speed the work. We fastened a forked stick to the center of the hind axle-tree of a wagon, letting the end-drag on the ground on an incline to say 20 degrees; fastened a chain or rope to the same axle, then we would drive up quartering to the carcass and hook the loose end of the chain over a front leg. After skinning the upper side down, then start the team up and pull the dead animal up a little, and stop. (The stick prevented the wagon from backing up.) Then we would skin the belly down mid-sides; start the team again, and pull the carcass over, having rolled the first side of the hide close to the backbone. Then we would skin down to the backbone, and the hide was separated from the carcass. We would then throw the hide in the wagon, and proceed as before until all the hides were skinned from the dead carcasses. Many times we had in one...
