Published in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, November 2, 1873
From the Kansas Magazine.
    Appearances indicated that this shaggy old fellow had been making a very good fight of it for several days. I dare say that in the maintenance of his social status he had gone back into the herd and stared at his descendants, and pawed and groaned, as much as fifty times. The long hair upon his huge neck was tangled and pulled until tufts of it hung loose and unkept. The outer fibres of his huge black horns hung in filaments and splinters. His wicked little eyes had a reddish glare, and his beard was limp and froth-wet beneath his chin. Nor was this all. Sundry long, oblique, hairless lines appeared on his flank, and he put his left forefoot down tenderly, very like remembering, at the same time, a square jounce he had got yerterday on the shoulder from some strongnecked youngster that had taken it upon himself to whip his father.
    He stood a little upon the outskirts now, his head towards me, pretending to eat grass. It was as nice herbage as a bull, whose teeth were probably none of the very best, could wish- the tender groowth of the early spring. But still he did not seem to enjoy it. At intervals of a minute or so he would look round quickly over his shoulder and groan, and stand thinking, and then pretend to eat again. To this distressful pantomime the ten thousand shaggy grazers paid not the least attention. They were busy. I could hear them cropping the grass, as I lay there, with a continous rasping sound. It was only too evident that all those cows whom he had so often combed into curliness with his long tongue of sunny mornings, and led aand herded and fought for; of all the little, stupid, hunped-backed, stump-tailed calves, his own offspring, there was not one who did not wish him disposed of according to buffalo destiny, or who cared how soon his last fight with the coyotes was over, and his monumental skull left standing upon its jagged base on the bleak hill-top, with scarce so much as a thigh-bone or tuft of brown hair by way of obituary.
    But this old one was still a buffalo and a bull, and he kept surreptitously getting nearer and nearer to the ragged border of the herd.
    Presently a calf came towards him slowly and in an investigatory sort of way, its little black nose wet and wrinkled, its little brown flanks distended with fullness, and the white milkfroth depending in long threads from its mouth. Gradually and slowly he went up to his father, and the two had just touched noses amicably when the mother also took it into her head to be friendly, and came too. Then came another cow, and another, and presently quite a little wing of the herd had gathered there, and the battered old warrior looked around him complacently. This kind of thing had doubtless happened so often that I wonder he did not seem to think of the result, but he did not. He might have known that he had arrived at that age when the young bloods of the herd would not look complacently upon his hoary gallantries. He was simply laying the plans for another fight, and the trouble began in the very midst of his content.
    A fellow as big as the old one must have seen this social gathering from some distance, and threw out certain intimations of his approach by little puffs of dust which flew high in the air above the crowd, and by ominous snortings and lugubrious groans. The old one stopped chewing with a green mouthful between his lips, and listened. The cows looked round with the complacent expression which seemed to say that the fight was none of theirs, and crowded off upon either side, and very soon the antagonists stood facing each other. The old boy straightened out his wisp of a tail to a line with his back, gathered his four black hoofs together, arched his spine, and placed his nose close to the sod, shaking his huge head as though he wished to satisfy himself finally of its freedom from any entanglement which would hinder him from just tossing that ambitious youngster over his back and breaking him in two. The other came slowly, twisting his tail from side to side in semicircle which were very deliberate and grand for so small an organ. He took pains to make it distinctly appear that every hair he wore was angry. His eyes rolled in constantly increasing redness. His black, sharp horns were encrusted with earth gathered while he had been tearing the sod in ecstasy of valor. His nostrils were distended, and he halted in his slow advance to toss the broken sod high over his shoulders with his pawing. He was, in a natural way, a tactician. He made flank movements, and turned his shaggy sides, first one and then the other, toward his huge antagonist.
    But this by-play of battle only hindered the final onset,-they by no means intended to take it out in vaporing. The challenger advanced within some four feet, getting angrier and angrier as he came. Suddenly there was a crash which had it something Homeric. One rattling onset of that kind leaves one in no doubt as to why the short, strong horns of the buffaloes have a splintered appearance at the apices. Then there was a long, steady push, in which every tendon of the huge bodies was straned to the uttermost. Then there was a strategegic easing off, then a sudden, gladiatorial thrust, which pressed the huge heads to the ground in an even balance of strength. Neither beast dared relax a muscle or retreat an inch, for fear of that fatal charge upon the flank, or that dangerous twist of the enck, which means defeat.
    And now the cows returned and looked complacently on, and the very calves began to shake their heads in the first vague instinct of combativeness inspired by the battle of the bulls. And the young lordlings of the herd distended their nostrils and elevated their tails, but forbore any interference. It was a duel a l’outrance. A momentary relaxation of the tremendous strain only resulted in the shaggy heads coming together again with a dull thump, and a renewal of the dogged pushing which might have moved a freight train. It was a matter of lungs and endurance, and the white froth began to drop in long, tenacious strings from the lips, and the red eyes to glare dimly through what seemed clots of blood. I could hear the labored breathing where I lay, and see the tendons stand out across the thighs and along the thick necks.
    But this dead set of strength could not last always. Every moment of time was telling disastrously upon the shorter wind and decaying strength of the old crusader, who still fought for the loves of his youth. His foot slipped, and the intelligence of this slight disaster seemed to reach his antagonist quicker than a flash of light. No gladiator ever urged his advantage more suddenly. There was a huge lunge, a sound of horns slipping upon each other, a spring forward, and the horn of the younger bull had made a raking upward stroke through his antagonist’s flank. The fight was now becoming brisk. Again and again the old one turned and tried to make the old stand of head to head, and as often his more active antagonist caught him behind his shoulder. With the red agony of defeat in his eye, and the blood trickling from the long wounds in his flanks, he still refused to be conquered. With failing strength and limbs which refused any longer to serve him, he finally stood at bay, with open mouth and hanging tongue, unable to fight and disdaining to retreat. His antagonist pushed him, and he yielded doggedly. He made no attempt to shield his flank, and pitifully endured all that came. The original plan of non-interference was abandoned, and the young lords gathered around him, and snorted and shook their heads, and gave him an occasional dig in the ribs by way of expressing their contempt for him. The cows came and snuffed at him, and indulged in spiteful feminine butts, and walked away. Their manner implied that they had always regarded him as a disagreeable old muff, and they were glad he finally understood their heartfelt sentiments in regard to him.
    Through all this the old follow stood unresisting, whipped, but still obstinate. Gradually they left him to himself, and the herd wandered further away. He did not even look around; he was probably forced at last to accept his sentence of banishment, and go and live as long as he could along, and fight his last fight with the coyotes and die.
    But that calf came out to see him again. I say that calf, because it seemed to me the same that had brought on this last unpleasantness, through for that matter they are all alike. The calf came and arched its back and pawed,, and elevated its nine-inch tail in front of him, and gave him to understand by the plainest kind of language it held itself in readiness to give him a most terrible drubbing, if he had not already had enough. It was comical to see him imitate the actions of his seniors, while the poor old bull did not so much as look at him. But his calfship was not inclined to push matters, and finally made a pass which placed his foolish head with a considerable thump against the soft part of the old man’s nose. Then he stood a moment with the air of having hurt himself a little, and toddled off to his mother.
    The old one did not move an inch, and seemed hardly to notice this babyish persecution. But I suspect it broke his heart. He wandered, limping and slowly, down toward the sedge, and I lay there forgetful of the long army musket beside me, regretting that there had been no one else there to bet with during the battle, or to stand up like a man and confirm this story afterwards. The sun rose high over the prairie, the wind veered, there was a sudden panic, and the herd vanished beyond the hills, leaving me to plod back to camp.