Our last day at Sheridan, for the Professor, was marked by two important events, namely: a communication from the living present, and another from the dead past. The first came, as the postmark showed, by way of Lindsey, on the Solomon river. The Professor said it was simply an answer to some scientific inquiries, but, to our intense amusement, he blushed like a school-girl when Sachem bluntly remarked that the handwriting was feminine, and that the scientific information in question must certainly be contraband, as it was not offered for our benefit at all. A geologist in love is a phenomenon. The dusty museum is no place for Cupid. In his flights, the mischievous boy is apt to hit his head against fossil lizards, and his darts are intercepted by skulls which were petrified before he ever wandered through Paradise and tried his first barb on poor Adam. The atmosphere which inwraps the geologist comes from an unlovable age, in which monstrosities existed only by virtue of their expertness in devouring other monstrosities. No stray spark of love-light flickered, even for an instant, over that waste of waters and gigantic ferns. It was apparent that science would suffer, unless the Solomon river was included in our homeward route. We had examined the heart of Buffalo Land, having traversed its center from east to west, and our party was disposed to oblige the Professor by returning along the northern border. Southward two hundred miles was the Arkansas, flowing near the southern limit of the buffalo region. While there were some reasons why we desired to visit it, and though it was, perhaps, equally rich in game, it promised nothing of greater interest, upon the whole, than the district we now proposed traversing. But of this more in the next chapter. Toward evening came our introduction to what we were pleased to imagine was a beauty of the past, which happened thus: As we were wandering among the Mexican teamsters loafing around the depot, an urchin, with half a shirt and very crooked legs, ran up to us, and exclaimed, over a half masticated morsel of cheese, "Mister, there's a bufferler!" His crumby fingers pointed in a direction midway between the horizon and a Mexican donkey, which its owner was trying to drag across the valley, and there, true enough, on the side of a brown ridge, not a mile off, we saw the game, feeding as usual. Here was a chance for horseback hunting again, which we had not attempted for several days. And what a splendid opportunity of showing the natives how well we could do the thing! Our wagons had groaned under the burden of pelts and meats with which we had loaded them, and we were suffering just then from that dangerous confidence which first success is so apt to inspire.