Mogul led his herd for many years, and a mighty herd it became, spreading in thousands far across the plain. The mighty thunder of its passing might be heard very far off, and the dust, when it moved, arose on high until it almost reached the sky. Gradually, but surely, the great herd began to diminish and thin out. Once a terrific drought killed many of them. For days and weeks they journeyed, the vast herd seeking old, well-remembered buffalo wallows over the trails, but when reached they were found dried out. The buffaloes pawed and dug deeply into the arid, salt-caked holes for moisture, but none came. They died by thousands. Afterwards the settlers came across stacks of their bleaching bones, lying just where they had fallen. So, weakened and hungry, for the drought had killed off the scant herbage, they travelled on, ever westward. Merciless Indians drove them farther on, and hunters of the plains, who coveted their valuable skins, made after them. Finally the great herd, all that was left of it, split, as by common consent, and chose a younger leader for their thinned ranks. One day Mogul, the king of the old herd, found himself deserted, and left to wander alone upon the great plains. In vain he tried to follow the herd, but they soon out-distanced him, and he came to realise that his company was no longer wanted. For many years he wandered, always alone, occasionally seeing scattered remnants of the great herd, but gradually they dropped off, either killed by Indians or dying from starvation. Somehow, old Mogul managed to escape the wolves, the skulking coyotes, the mountain lions and the Indians. One day, utterly lonely, he sighted a vast herd. At first he thought they were buffaloes, but on coming up with them he saw they were long-horned red cattle, which had now taken the place of his lost tribe. Because he longed for company, Mogul joined the red cattle, and they did not molest or drive him away. Now, out on a reservation, somewhere in the West, herding with the long-horned cattle of the plains, grazes Mogul, the old buffalo leader. His teeth are broken, but he still crops at the grass, and when he lifts his head you may see that he has but one horn; he lost the other in a fierce battle for his life with a grizzly. Sometimes the old buffalo lifts his great shaggy head and gazes straight out across the broad plains with his old, dim eyes and lows deeply and longingly, perhaps remembering his lost tribe and other days. When the cowboys round up the cattle, they often point out to strangers from the East a solitary old buffalo, grazing, usually somewhat apart from the cattle, on the edge of the herd, and then they say, not without some pride: "See that old buffalo out there. He was once leader of a well-known powerful tribe, but he is old, just how old we cannot say, and he's now the last great buffalo left of a mighty herd." CHAPTER XV THE LAST PANTHER ON CUSHMAN RANGE