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By the time that the buffalo charge had passed on through and the animals were making off into the distance, most of the train’s hunters had arrived. The other hunters, from below, also arrived. They proved to be a party of emigrants, for California, who did not understand how to hunt buffalo. In fact, they had not killed a single one. However, Lew Simpson gave them a pretty dressing down for their carelessness.

“You’ve held us up for a day, at least,” he stormed; “and you’ve done us several hundred dollars’ worth of damage besides.”

“Well-nigh killed that boy, too,” spoke somebody. “Did you see him peel that shirt? Haw-haw! Slipped out of it quicker’n a snake goin’ through a holler log!”

“Little Billy came a-runnin’, though,” reminded somebody else.

“Yep; but didn’t save the shirt!”

That was true—everybody agreed that Davy would not have been saved had he not acted promptly. He was given another shirt (a blue one) to take the place of the one sacrificed to the big buffalo.

The California party rode away, taking a little meat that Lew Simpson offered them after they had properly apologized for their clumsiness. The rest of the day was spent in cutting up the buffaloes, and in repairing the wagons and harness. Not until the next noon was the train able to resume its creaking way, down the Platte River trail, for the Missouri River at Fort Leavenworth.