Buffalo Bill’s Best Bet
OR,
A SURE THING WELL WON
BY
Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
Author of the celebrated “Buffalo Bill” stories published in the
BORDER STORIES. For other titles see catalogue.
[Illustration: (Colophon)]
STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York
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| Copyright, 1914 |
| By STREET & SMITH |
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| Buffalo Bill’s Best Bet |
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(Printed in the United States of America)
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
CONTENTS
PAGE
IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F. CODY 1
I. TEMPTED. 5
II. A DOUBLE REWARD FOR LIFE. 9
III. THE FORFEIT. 13
IV. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE. 21
V. BUFFALO BILL’S BET. 23
VI. OLD NEGOTIATE’S WARNING. 30
VII. BUFFALO BILL’S CHARGE. 35
VIII. A VILLAIN SURPRISED. 40
IX. THE AMBUSH. 46
X. A MYSTERY. 52
XI. THE HEART OF A WOMAN. 59
XII. BUFFALO BILL RECEIVES A LETTER. 63
XIII. PARSON BRISTOW HOLDS TRUMPS. 66
XIV. CLOSE QUARTERS. 71
XV. MARY HALE. 74
XVI. BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 80
XVII. A FOE’S GRATITUDE. 84
XVIII. PARSON MILLER VISITS THE JUDGE. 88
XIX. MERCILESS. 95
XX. THE FLIGHT. 99
XXI. AN UNEXPECTED HALT. 104
XXII. THE RED RIGHT HAND. 107
XXIII. A STARTLING APPARITION. 110
XXIV. AN UNEXPECTED SIGHT. 112
XXV. AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER. 119
XXVI. AN OLD FRIEND AND NEW FACES. 126
XXVII. THE TWO STRONGHOLDS. 132
XXVIII. THE WHITE AND RED CHIEFS. 135
XXIX. KANSAS KING, THE OUTLAW. 143
XXX. PEARL’S WARNING. 151
XXXI. BAD BURKE’S TREACHERY. 158
XXXII. THE SPECTER OF THE VALLEY. 162
XXXIII. TICKLISH WORK. 172
XXXIV. THE MEETING IN THE CAÑON. 183
XXXV. THE ANSWERED CRY. 187
XXXVI. UNCLE SAM’S BOYS. 191
XXXVII. THE FAIRY GLEN. 196
XXXVIII. THE WAR CRY. 199
XXXIX. THE MYSTERY SOLVED. 204
XL. TWO WEDDINGS. 211
XLI. THE BRANDED BROTHERHOOD. 214
XLII. THE RESCUE. 221
XLIII. A TRAITOR IN CAMP. 227
XLIV. RUNNING THE GANTLET. 234
XLV. A WARNING AND A RAID. 239
XLVI. TREACHERY. 245
XLVII. IN THE CAMP. 253
XLVIII. IN THE NICK OF TIME. 261
XLIX. AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY. 267
L. PLOTTING MISCHIEF. 274
LI. CAPTURING THE SENTINEL. 280
LII. BUFFALO BILL’S DARING. 286
LIII. BUFFALO BILL’S DEFENSE. 298
LIV. THE BATTLE WITH THE BROTHERHOOD. 304
LV. A STARTLING REVELATION. 311
LVI. THE RETURN TO RIVERSIDE. 319
IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F. CODY
(BUFFALO BILL).
It is now some generations since Josh Billings, Ned Buntline, and
Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, intimate friends of Colonel William F. Cody,
used to forgather in the office of Francis S. Smith, then proprietor
of the _New York Weekly_. It was a dingy little office on Rose Street,
New York, but the breath of the great outdoors stirred there when these
old-timers got together. As a result of these conversations, Colonel
Ingraham and Ned Buntline began to write of the adventures of Buffalo
Bill for Street & Smith.
Colonel Cody was born in Scott County, Iowa, February 26, 1846. Before
he had reached his teens, his father, Isaac Cody, with his mother and
two sisters, migrated to Kansas, which at that time was little more
than a wilderness.
When the elder Cody was killed shortly afterward in the Kansas “Border
War,” young Bill assumed the difficult rôle of family breadwinner.
During 1860, and until the outbreak of the Civil War, Cody lived the
arduous life of a pony-express rider. Cody volunteered his services as
government scout and guide and served throughout the Civil War with
Generals McNeil and A. J. Smith. He was a distinguished member of the
Seventh Kansas Cavalry.
During the Civil War, while riding through the streets of St. Louis,
Cody rescued a frightened schoolgirl from a band of annoyers. In true
romantic style, Cody and Louisa Federci, the girl, were married March
6, 1866.
In 1867 Cody was employed to furnish a specified amount of buffalo meat
to the construction men at work on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It was
in this period that he received the sobriquet “Buffalo Bill.”
In 1868 and for four years thereafter Colonel Cody served as scout
and guide in campaigns against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. It was
General Sheridan who conferred on Cody the honor of chief of scouts of
the command.
After completing a period of service in the Nebraska legislature, Cody
joined the Fifth Cavalry in 1876, and was again appointed chief of
scouts.
Colonel Cody’s fame had reached the East long before, and a great
many New Yorkers went out to see him and join in his buffalo hunts,
including such men as August Belmont, James Gordon Bennett, Anson
Stager, and J. G. Heckscher. In entertaining these visitors at Fort
McPherson, Cody was accustomed to arrange wild-West exhibitions. In
return his friends invited him to visit New York It was upon seeing his
first play in the metropolis that Cody conceived the idea of going into
the show business.
Assisted by Ned Buntline, novelist, and Colonel Ingraham, he started
his “Wild West” show, which later developed and expanded into “A
Congress of the Rough Riders of the World,” first presented at Omaha,
Nebraska. In time it became a familiar yearly entertainment in the
great cities of this country and Europe. Many famous personages
attended the performances, and became his warm friends, including Mr.
Gladstone, the Marquis of Lorne, King Edward, Queen Victoria, and the
Prince of Wales, now King of England.
At the outbreak of the Sioux, in 1890 and 1891, Colonel Cody served
at the head of the Nebraska National Guard. In 1895 Cody took up the
development of Wyoming Valley by introducing irrigation. Not long
afterward he became judge advocate general of the Wyoming National
Guard.
Colonel Cody (Buffalo Bill) died in Denver, Colorado, on January
10, 1917. His legacy to a grateful world was a large share in
the development of the West, and a multitude of achievements in
horsemanship, marksmanship, and endurance that will live for ages.
His life will continue to be a leading example of the manliness,
courage, and devotion to duty that belonged to a picturesque phase
of American life now passed, like the great patriot whose career it
typified, into the Great Beyond.
BUFFALO BILL’S BEST BET.
CHAPTER I.
TEMPTED.
“One thousand dollars for my life.”
“You holds it cheap, pard.”
“It is all I have with me.”
“Guess not, fer men say as how you hes dimints ’bout yer clothes, ef
yer goes broke with gold dust.”
“I have diamonds with me; two splendid ones, and you shall have your
choice if you aid me.”
“And the thousand dollars, too, pard?”
“Yes.”
“Say both dimints and nine hundred dollars, an’ I’ll aid yer, an’
yer’ll then hev a hundred dollars to speckilate on, an’ yer is a born
gambler, men say, so won’t go broke long.”
The speakers were standing in the shadow of a large tree. The scene
around them was picturesque in the extreme, for the open prairie
stretched upon the one hand, with twoscore horses lariated out to feed
upon the rich grass, and upon the other was a grove of timber, now
illuminated by a dozen camp fires, around which sat a dashing, reckless
set of men, smoking and talking over the dangers they had known.
The bivouac in the woods, with the red glare of the fires, the horses
picketed upon the prairie, and the silvery light of the moon casting a
halo over all, made up a scene for the brush of an artist.
But the two men standing in the shadow of the tree that stood alone,
as it were, a few yards out of the grove, cared not for the scene of
beauty before them.
Their eyes were bent on each other, and their thoughts were bent on
some stern purpose. One was a prisoner, the other his guard.
The prisoner was none other than Kent King, known as the Gambler Guide,
whom the Texas herders had taken prisoner, and were carrying with them
to the Lone Star State, where the doom of death awaited him for crimes
committed in the past.
Now, as he stood by the side of the man, who was that night his guard,
and who was known as Poker Dick, the glare of the firelight on the one
side and the radiance of the moonlight upon the other showed that he
was securely bound hand and foot.
A bivouac or two more and the Revolver Riders, as the band of herders
were called, would be in Santa Fe, toward which gay place they were
destined, that they might pass a week or two there in spending their
money, gambling and catering to their enjoyment in various ways.
Once in Santa Fe, Kent King knew that he was doomed, for, thence down
into Texas the herders would doubtless go in company with trains, and
all chances of escape would be cut off forever from him; or, perhaps,
the Texans, in the height of their revels in the town, might take upon
themselves to hang him, and try him for his crimes afterward.
A man of indomitable will and undisputed courage, he would meet death
bravely, looking it squarely in the face, come when or how it might.
But, possessed of a fascination of manner that made him a dangerous
friend to women, a talent for card playing that kept his pockets always
full of gold, and a love of life that was as strong as his disregard
for the lives of others, he was determined to make a bold attempt to
escape.
To do so by physical force and daring he knew was impossible among the
men who held him prisoner, and he therefore must use strategy.
“You look blue to-night, pard,” Kent King had said to Poker Dick in his
pleasant way, after the other herders had assembled around the camp
fires.
“I is blue,” was the answer.
“Why, I should think you would be happy, as we will soon reach Santa
Fe, where you expect a good time, and after that you are going back
home.”
“Home is what makes me blue, pard. I hes lost to ther boys all I got
fer my leetle drove o’ hoof critters, an’ I’m going back to ther old
folks without a dollar, unless I kin win some dust in Santa Fe.”
“I have some money with me,” said the prisoner.
“Guess yer will keep it, too.”
“Not if you want it.”
“Pard, I isn’t ther man ter take gold from a corpse, fer yer is leetle
more, seein’ as how yer’ll be h’isted soon as we reach Texas.”
“That is just what I wish to avoid. I have gold with me, and if by any
chance I could escape, why, then, you wouldn’t have to go back poor.”
The guard started and turned pale, for the wily tempter had touched his
sordid nature.
“Well, Poker Dick, what say you? I have gold and you have none.”
“What will yer give me, pard, fer ter drop off to sleep an’ let yer
skip?” asked Poker Dick, in a whisper.
Then came the answer that opens this story:
“One thousand dollars for my life.”