Andrews joins Miller’s Colorado bison-hunting expedition

Andrews joins Miller’s Colorado bison-hunting expedition as both financier and novice, committing $600 to a hunt whose central asset is Miller’s discovery of a secluded valley filled with bison. The venture begins as a calculated answer to Kansas’s dwindling herds and the trade in valuable winter hides; it becomes an immersion in industrial-scale killing, with consequences for Andrews that outlast the hunt and a market that cannot deliver the promised reward.

The declining Kansas herds and Miller’s discovery

Miller explains the expedition against the background of a rapidly changing hunt. Four years earlier, when he and J.D. McDonald arrived in Butcher’s Crossing, spring plains could appear black with bison for miles. A two-week hunt might bring in a thousand or fifteen hundred animals, including prized spring hides. By the time Miller speaks with William Andrews, the herds have broken into small groups, and a successful hunt yields only a few hundred. Miller expects that in another year or two there will be no bison left to hunt in Kansas. J.D. McDonald’s business records the commercial scale of the change: he buys and processes hides locally for wholesale sale in Saint Louis, having handled nearly 100,000 the previous year and expecting two or three times that number in the current one.

Miller’s alternative comes from an earlier trapping trip in Colorado. In the autumn of 1863, he left his beaver traps by a river and climbed into the mountains in search of bears. After several days, a narrow gorge led him down to a hard, flat track, ten or twelve feet wide, worn into the earth by generations of bison. Following it, he reached a broad valley that wound through the mountains. Small herds ranged across it as far as he could see; from his vantage point he estimated three or four thousand animals, with more concealed in folds of the terrain. He stayed two days and found no human tracks. The bison trail disappeared among trees near the river, making the valley difficult to spot from below. To Miller, the place was not merely a refuge from depleted Kansas hunting grounds: it was a private opportunity whose value depended on keeping other hunters away.

Recruitment, investment, and departure

Miller wants a party that will let him set the terms and keep rival hunters out. He estimates that four men can do the work: one hunter to kill the bison, two skinners, and someone to manage camp. Fewer participants, he reasons, mean more profit. William Andrews responds to the account with growing excitement and asks how such a hunt could be organized. Miller makes clear that it will remain his hunt, but agrees to proceed if Andrews pays for transport and provisions.

The proposed equipment reflects the distance and the party’s plan to travel slowly. Miller chooses a wagon and oxen rather than mules: oxen can graze along the route and pull heavy loads, while mules require hay. He expects the party to reach the mountains by mid-September, hunt for a week or ten days, and spend about two weeks returning. Andrews agrees. When Miller asks for the money, Andrews takes a roll of bills from a pouch beneath his shirt and counts out $600 on the scarred tabletop. Miller says he will go to Ellsworth for supplies and return in less than a week; he also gives Charley Hoge money to manage until then. Although Charley initially says he will not come, the departure scene shows four men setting out.

At dawn on August 25, the party gathers behind the stables with a wagon loaded with provisions for six weeks. Charley Hoge drives the oxen, while Miller, Fred Schneider, and William Andrews ride ahead. They leave Butcher’s Crossing in silence, pass Jackson’s Saloon, and pause to look back at the dark village before continuing west. Once across the river, Miller directs them away from the road and out across the open plain. The track disappears within minutes; behind the wagon, parallel wheel marks are quickly swallowed by the horizon. The physical departure thus begins the expedition’s separation from settled routes and familiar landmarks.

The hunt and Andrews’s changing perspective

The expedition’s commercial arrangements initially seem straightforward. Miller tells the party that J.D. McDonald will buy the hides, sparing them the trouble of hauling them to Ellsworth. The agreed price is four dollars for each winter hide, and McDonald already has a buyer in the East. That price and outlet make the remote valley appear convertible into a substantial return on Andrews’s investment.

In the valley, however, the pace of work becomes inseparable from the pace of killing. Miller shoots while Fred Schneider and William Andrews try to skin and butcher the animals he leaves behind. They work into the evening and rise before dawn to cut apart carcasses stiffened by night. The repeated crack of Miller’s rifle follows them through the day; at camp, he sits by the fire with black powder settled over his unwashed face. The task is no longer a short hunt measured simply by days in the field. Its scale is set by the number of animals Miller intends to kill.

As the herd dwindles, Andrews recognizes that he has never seriously imagined its complete destruction. He has understood, without needing Miller to state it, that Miller will not leave while a single bison remains alive. This changes the way Andrews measures time: unlike Schneider, who counts the passing days, he calculates their return by the number of animals left. Around him, bison bodies cover the ground, and the survivors graze among them on grass marked with dried blood. The stink of the carcasses has become so familiar that he scarcely notices it. His attention has shifted from the expedition’s schedule to the annihilation unfolding in front of him.

That shift also reaches beyond the immediate work. Andrews finds that the world outside the high plateau has grown indistinct in his memory. The mountain route, the thirsty plains, and Butcher’s Crossing seem distant and dreamlike. The valley’s flat floor, yellow-green ground, enclosing mountains, pines, and autumn-colored aspens have become the landscape through which he understands his own existence. Joining the expedition therefore brings not only a change of place but a narrowing of his perceived world, as his identity and sense of time become bound to the valley and the hunt.

The failed promise of profit

The expedition’s success in obtaining hides does not guarantee that they can be sold. On returning, Miller insists that 3,000 first-rate winter hides remain in the mountains and says they would be worth more than $10,000 even after transport costs. But J.D. McDonald can no longer honor the original price. He explains that demand for bison furs has disappeared: just as beaver hats went out of fashion and their pelts lost their market, customers who wanted bison fur seem to have bought what they wanted. He cannot say why demand changed, only that the market may not recover for four or five years; by then, winter hides might be worth no more than summer ones.

The railway’s arrival does not rescue the expedition’s business model. Its tracks are being laid fifty miles north, while hunters sell bison meat to the railway company and leave the hides to rot where they were skinned. The contrast exposes what the hunt’s original price calculation missed: killing and processing animals could produce a vast stock of hides, but the stock had value only while distant buyers wanted it and transportation connected it to them. Andrews’s investment helps make the expedition possible; it cannot secure a market. The hunt’s decisive result is thus double: the valley’s herd is driven toward total destruction, while the commercial reward that justified that destruction proves vulnerable to changing demand.