tread, almost running over me and sending a thrill of fright coursing through our anatomy, which almost paralyzed us and scared our horses so that Dick Seymore, Hank Clifford and Snell's horses broke away and went with the rushing, surging herd toward the Sunny South, bridled and saddled but riderless.
     John Nelson and myself followed to try and overtake the fugitives, but they were soon lost to our view.  In the herd of thousands of buffalo, though we followed on in hopes of coming up with the horses.
     Near the mouth of the Mitchell we found were the buffalo had run over a bluff, at one place nearly a hundred feet down to the bottom, where stood a large elm tree in which the gentle zephyrs had moaned the evening requiems of solitude, among its leafy branches, for many long years in the flight of ages, undisturbed.  But in the wild rush of the bison of the plains, a huge buffalo was crowded off the perpendicular cliff and lodged in the old elm.  This was the only time I ever saw a buffalo up a tree.
     We followed the Medicine down to the Republican River, thence down that stream fifteen miles, where we came to a little log house and stakes stuck up all over the prairie.  This we found occupied by two men, a woman and a child, also a dog.  We soon learned the parties were Bill Colvin, Geo. Love and family; that was the first habitation we had seen, in all the county, outside of our own on the Medicine.
     As our horses were tired out, we told them we would camp with them that night.  We unsaddled, picketed out our ponies and began looking around for some meat for supper.  As luck was to our hand in that line, a herd of buffalo came along near by.  I took up my needle-gun and started after them, when one of the men called to me, saying:
     "We wish you would not kill any of those animals inside the town site, as it might be hard for us to remove the carcass."
     I apologized, saying, "I did not know that I was in town, but grant your request, and would not intentionally violate any city ordinance."
      Love said the Captain Murphy had come out from Plattsmouth with a colony, staked out a town and named it Arapahoe.  The stakes I thought to be picket pins were the landmarks of the lots and street of the new town.  This was in the summer of 1871 and the county was not organized until 1873, and named Furnas.
     Captain Murphy was an officer in the army and experienced many hard fights with the Indians over this country.  In the sixties he had a ranch of the Platte River at Alkali, before the U.P. railroad was built.  In 1878 I was married to his daughter Laura Murphy, the first marriage of white people in the county.
     To return to the chase after the horses:  there were so many buffalo that they tramped out every track, and trailing them was impossible.   After days of hard riding we returned without the horses, which was quite a loss to us.

LORD DUNRAVEN


     Lord Dunraven and Dr. Kingsley of England came here on a hunting tour and took back, as a souvenir of the trip, a buffalo head, also two wildcats that I caught for them.  I had a collection of wild animals that were interesting to many of the "tenderfeet" who came along.

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