One day Jack and I had been killing some buffalo for wolf baits on the high prairie south of our camp. We had become separated by a couple of miles; each had killed his buffalo, and I had poisoned mine and started to Jack, who was waiting for me to prepare his buffalo for the wolves also. As I rode through a scattered lot of bones, where several animals seemed to have been killed together, I noticed among the lot a human skull. Looking more closely, I saw other human bones of the same skeleton and those of a horse, the hoofs of which, with the shoes still on, showed that it had not been an Indian's horse. Bones of wolves lay among the others. Here, then, seemed the evidences of a past tragedy, and, wishing to have Jack come and help to read the signs, I rode out clear of this bone-yard, fired a shot from my rifle to attract his attention, and then began riding around in a circle--the usual signal in such cases--to call him to me. He understood and galloped toward me. While he was coming I walked about among the relics, trying to solve the mystery of which these bones were the record. They had been somewhat scattered, by the wolves that had picked them, but their general lay indicated pretty clearly the relative situation of the man and animals at the time of their death. The bones had probably not been there more than about a year. Although somewhat mixed and scattered, the general lay of the bones seemed to show the buffalo on one side, the horse on the other, and the man between them. The man's skull had a small bullet hole through it at the temples, which sufficiently indicated the immediate cause of his death; but whether this shot had come from an enemy or had been self-inflicted could not be determined by the signs. While thus trying to interpret the indications, Jack reached me. "Here, Jack, has been a man, horse, and buffalo killed," I said as he halted, "and from the looks of things, I think it happened about a year ago. Help me to read the signs. The horse was a white man's horse, for the hoofs, you see, have shoes on." "That ain't sure proof," replied he, "for the horse might have been lately captured or stolen from the whites. But, hold on!" he exclaimed after a moment's survey of the bone-yard, as, stooping, he picked up what proved to be the lower jaw-bone of the human skull. "This settles it. This says he was a white man, for here's a gold plug in one tooth." "Well, that settles one important point," I replied. "But how did the buffalo, man, and horse happen to die so close together?" "Seems to me," said Jack, still walking about scrutinizing the relics, "it could have happened in only one or two ways. Either the man and his horse have been killed by a wounded bull, an' the bull then fell an' died with 'em, or--which is more likely--the man killed the buffalo an', while busy cutting some of the meat out, was corralled by Injuns. How do you read it?"