THE CHAMPION OF THE PLAINS.
As Buffalo Bill was known to be the most successful hunter on the
prairies, shortly after his capture of the herd of Indian ponies he
received an offer from the Kansas Pacific Railroad Company to keep their
workmen supplied with meat, and the terms allowed him were so generous
that he felt he owed it to his family, for he had become the father of a
lovely little daughter, Arta, born in Leavenworth, to accept the
proposition, and did so.
The employees of the road numbered some twelve hundred, and Buffalo
Bill's duty was to supply them with fresh meat, a most arduous task, and
a dangerous one, for the Indians were constantly upon the war-path.
But he undertook the work, and it was but a very short while before his
fame as a buffalo-killer equaled his reputation as an Indian-fighter,
and often on a hunt for the shaggy brutes, he had to fight the red
savages who constantly sought his life.
It was during his service for the Kansas Pacific that he was
rechristened Buffalo Bill, and he certainly deserved the renewal of his
name, as in one season he killed the enormous number of _four thousand
eight hundred and twenty buffaloes_, a feat never before, or since
equaled.
And during this time, in the perils he met with, and his numerous
hair-breadth escapes, in conflict with red-skins, horse-thieves and
desperadoes, it is estimated that over a score of human beings fell
before his unerring rifle and revolvers, while, he still bearing a
charmed life, received only a few slight wounds.