see all the ways of the civilization he had left behind come duly
hither to search him out. He was not satisfied to abandon his law
books for the saddle, but as yet there was no possibility of any
practice in the law, though meantime one must live, however simply. It
was all made easy. That wild Nature, which had erected rude barriers
against the coming of the white man, had at her reluctant recession
left behind the means by which the white man might prevail. Even in
the "first year" the settler of the new West was able to make his
living. He killed off the buffalo swiftly, but he killed them in
numbers so desperately large that their bones lay in uncounted tons all
over a desolated empire. First the hides and then the bones of the
buffalo gave the settler his hold upon the land, which perhaps he could
not else have won.

Franklin saw many wagons coming and unloading their cargoes of bleached
bones at the side of the railroad tracks. The heap of bones grew vast,
white, ghastly, formidable, higher than a house, more than a bowshot
long. There was a market for all this back in that country which had
conceived this road across the desert. Franklin put out a wagon at
this industry, hauling in the fuel and the merchandise of the raw
plains. He bought the grim product of others who were ready to sell
and go out the earlier again. He betimes had out more than one wagon
of his own; and Battersleigh, cavalryman, became Batty, scouter for
bones, while Franklin remained at the market. It was Franklin who,
bethinking himself of the commercial difference between hard black horn
and soft, spongy bone, began the earliest shipments of the tips of the
buffalo horns, which he employed a man to saw off and pack into sacks
ready for the far-off button factories. Many tons of these tips alone
he came to ship, such had been the incredible abundance and the
incredible waste; and thus thriving upon an industry whose cause and