Follows the adventures of Keith Hayden in the spring of 1876 when he joins a band of buffalo runners on the Western plains.

‘The Buffalo Runners’ is a pioneering adventure story by prolific author R.M. Ballantyne. Set in Canada, a country where Ballantyne had lived, worked, and adventured as a young man, the story is full of realistic details no doubt drawn from the author’s own experiences. The tale centres around a new settlement which is trying to establish itself in a hostile and as yet unsettled part of Canada. The community must contend with all sorts of dangers – from plagues of locusts, to kidnappings and famine - this is an adventure story full of the extremes of pioneer life. R.M. Ballantyne (1825-1894) was a Scottish artist and prolific author of mostly children’s fiction. Born in Edinburgh, Ballantyne was the ninth of ten children. At the age of 16 Ballantyne moved to Canada, where he worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company, travelling all over the country to trade for fur. He returned to Scotland in 1847 following the death of his father, and it was then that he began his literary career in earnest, writing over 100 children’s adventure books over the course of his life. Stories such as ‘The Coral Island’ and ‘The Young Fur Traders’ were hugely popular, and many of them drew on his own experiences of travelling throughout Canada. A stickler for detail, Ballantyne continued to travel widely to research the backgrounds and settings for his exciting stories. His tales became an inspiration for authors of the future, including ‘Treasure Island’ novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. Ballantyne spent the latter period of his life living in London and Italy for the sake of his health. He died in Rome in 1894 at the age of 68.

“The Buffalo Runners: A Tale of the Red River Plains” is a children's adventure novel set in the American Old West by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. Full of thrilling action, terrible danger, and intrepid heroism, “The Buffalo Runners” will appeal to children with an interest in history and would make for a worthy addition to collections of vintage Western literature. Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825 – 1894) was a Scottish author of children's fiction. He was a prolific writer and produced over 100 books in his lifetime. As well as being an author, Ballantyne was also an accomplished artist, having exhibited his work at the Royal Scottish Academy. Other notable works by this author include: “The Coral Island” (1858), “The Gorilla Hunters” (1861), and “The Eagle Cliff” (1889). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction and biography of the author. This book was first published in 1861.

A blizzard was blowing wildly over the American prairies one winter day in the earlier part of the present century.Fresh, free and straight, it came from the realms of Jack Frost, and cold—bitterly cold—like the bergs on the Arctic seas, to which it had but recently said farewell.Snow, fine as dust and sharp as needles, was caught up bodily by the wind in great masses—here in snaky coils, there in whirling eddies, elsewhere in rolling clouds; but these had barely time to assume indefinite forms when they were furiously scattered and swept away as by the besom of destruction, while earth and sky commingled in a smother of whitey-grey.All the demons of the Far North seemed to have taken an outside passage on that blizzard, so tremendous was the roaring and shrieking, while the writhing of tormented snow-drifts suggested powerfully the madness of agony.Two white and ghostly pillars moved slowly but steadily through all this hurly-burly in a straight line. One of the pillars was short and broad; the other was tall and stately. Both were very solid—agreeably so, when contrasted with surrounding chaos. Suddenly the two pillars stopped—though the gale did not.