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Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer
OR,
THE STRANGER IN CAMP
By Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
Author of the celebrated "Buffalo Bill" stories published in the BORDER
STORIES. For other titles see catalogue.
[Illustration]
STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York
Copyright, 1908
By STREET & SMITH
Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
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 role 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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. THE HERMIT OF THE GRAND CANYON 5
II. THE MINER'S SECRET 14
III. THE GRAVE AT THE DESERTED CAMP 20
IV. A VOW OF VENGEANCE 28
V. MASKED AND MERCILESS 33
VI. THE DUMB MESSENGER 41
VII. DEATH AND MADNESS 50
VIII. A STRANGE BURIAL 62
IX. THE COURIER 67
X. DOCTOR DICK'S DRIVE 76
XI. RUNNING THE GANTLET 84
XII. A MAN'S NERVE 92
XIII. A VOLUNTEER 97
XIV. THE WAY IT WAS DONE 105
XV. A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE 114
XVI. TAKING CHANCES 122
XVII. A SECRET KEPT 130
XVIII. A MYSTERIOUS SOUND 138
XIX. A FAIR PASSENGER 143
XX. MASKED FOES 151
XXI. THE SACRIFICE 159
XXII. THE RANSOM 168
XXIII. THE OUTLAWS' CAPTIVE 181
XXIV. THE TWO FUGITIVES 186
XXV. THE OUTLAW LOVER 195
XXVI. THE SECRET OUT 200
XXVII. THE DEPARTURE 210
XXVIII. THE LONE TRAIL 219
XXIX. TO WELCOME THE FAIR GUEST 223
XXX. AT THE RENDEZVOUS 231
XXXI. DOCTOR DICK TELLS THE NEWS 239
XXXII. THE MINERS' WELCOME 248
XXXIII. THE COUNCIL 252
XXXIV. A METAMORPHOSIS 259
XXXV. THE DRIVER'S LETTER 268
XXXVI. THE SCOUT ON THE WATCH 272
XXXVII. THE MINER'S MISSION 280
XXXVIII. A LEAF FROM THE PAST 288
XXXIX. THE OUTLAW'S CONFESSION 298
XL. TEARING OFF THE MASK 303
BUFFALO BILL'S SPY TRAILER.
CHAPTER I.
THE HERMIT OF THE GRAND CANYON.
A horseman drew rein one morning, upon the brink of the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado, a mighty abyss, too vast for the eye to take in its grand
immensity; a mighty mountain rent asunder and forming a chasm which is a
valley of grandeur and beauty, through which flows the Colorado Grande.
Ranges of mountains tower to cloudland on all sides with cliffs of
scarlet, blue, violet, yes, all hues of the rainbow; crystal streams
flowing merrily along; verdant meadows, vales and hills, with massive
forests everywhere--such was the sight that met the admiring gaze of the
horseman as he sat there in his saddle, his horse looking down into the
canyon.
It was a spot avoided by Indians as the abiding-place of evil spirits; a
scene shunned by white men, a mighty retreat where a fugitive, it would
seem, would be forever safe, no matter what the crime that had driven
him to seek a refuge there.
Adown from where the horseman had halted, was the bare trace of a trail,
winding around the edge of an overhanging rock by a shelf that was not a
yard in width and which only a man could tread whose head was cool and
heart fearless.
Wrapt in admiration of the scene, the mist-clouds floating lazily upward
from the canyon, the silver ribbon far away that revealed the winding
river, and the songs of birds coming from a hundred leafy retreats on
the hillsides, the horseman gave a deep sigh, as though memories most
sad were awakened in his breast by the scene, and then dismounting began
to unwrap a lariat from his saddle-horn.
He was dressed as a miner, wore a slouch-hat, was of commanding
presence, and his darkly bronzed face, heavily bearded, was full of
determination, intelligence, and expression.
Two led horses, carrying heavy packs, were behind the animal he rode,
and attaching the lariats to their bits he took one end and led the way
down the most perilous and picturesque trail along the shelf running
around the jutting point of rocks.
When he drew near the narrowest point, he took off the saddle and packs,
and one at a time led the horses downward and around the hazardous
rocks.
A false step, a movement of fright in one of the animals, would send him
downward to the depths more than a mile below.
But the trembling animals seemed to have perfect confidence in their
master, and after a long while he got them by the point of greatest
peril.
Going back and forward he carried the packs and saddles, and replacing
them upon the animals began once more the descent of the only trail
leading down into the Grand Canyon, from that side.
The way was rugged, most dangerous in places, and several times his
horses barely escaped a fall over the precipice, the coolness and strong
arm of the man alone saving them from death, and his stores from
destruction.
It was nearly sunset when he at last reached the bottom of the
stupendous rift, and only the tops of the cliffs were tinged with the
golden light, the valley being in densest shadow.
Going on along the canyon at a brisk pace, as though anxious to reach
some camping-place before nightfall, after a ride of several miles he
came in sight of a wooded canyon, entering the one he was then in, and
with heights towering toward heaven so far that all below seemed as
black as night.
But a stream wound out of the canyon, to mingle its clear waters with the
grand Colorado River a mile away, and massive trees grew near at hand,
sheltering a cabin that stood upon the sloping hill at the base of a
cliff that arose thousands of feet above it.
When within a few hundred yards of the lone cabin, suddenly there was a
crashing, grinding sound, a terrific roar, a rumbling, and the earth
seemed shaken violently as the whole face of the mighty cliff came
crushing down into the valley, sending up showers of splintered rocks
and clouds of dust that were blinding and appalling!
Back from the scene of danger fled the frightened horses, the rider
showing no desire to check their flight until a spot of safety was
reached.
Then, half a mile from the fallen cliff, he paused, his face white, his
whole form quivering, while his horses stood trembling with terror.
"My God! the cliff has fallen upon my home, and my unfortunate comrade
lies buried beneath a mountain of rocks. We mined too far beneath the
cliff, thus causing a cave-in.
"A few minutes more and I would also have shared poor Langley's fate;
but a strange destiny it is that protects me from death--a strange one
indeed! He is gone, and I alone am now the Hermit of the Grand Canyon, a
Croesus in wealth of gold, yet a fugitive from my fellow men. What a
fate is mine, and how will it all end, I wonder?"
Thus musing the hermit-miner sat upon his own horse listening to the
echoes rumbling through the Grand Canyon, growing fainter and fainter,
like a retreating army fighting off its pursuing foes.
An hour passed before the unnerved man felt able to seek a camp for the
night, so great had been the shock of the falling cliff, and the fate he
had felt had overtaken his comrade.
At last he rode on up the canyon once more, determined to seek a spot he
knew well where he could camp, a couple of miles above his destroyed
home.
He passed the pile of rocks, heaped far up the cliff from which they had
fallen, looking upon them as the sepulcher of his companion.
"Poor Lucas Langley! He, too, had his sorrows, and his secrets, which
drove him, like me, to seek a retreat far from mankind, and become a
hunted man. Alas! what has the future in store for me?"
With a sigh he rode on up the valley, his way now guided by the
moonlight alone, and at last turned into another canyon, for the Grand
Canyon has hundreds of others branching off from it, some of them
penetrating for miles back into the mountains.
He had gone up this canyon for a few hundred yards, and was just about to
halt, and go into camp upon the banks of a small stream, when his eyes
caught sight of a light ahead.
"Ah! what does that mean?" he ejaculated in surprise.
Hardly had he spoken when from up the canyon came the deep voice of a dog
barking, his scent telling him of a human presence near.
"Ah! Savage is not dead then, and, after all, Lucas Langley may have
escaped."
The horseman rode quickly on toward the light. The barking of the dog
continued, but it was not a note of warning but of welcome, and as the
horseman drew rein by a camp-fire a huge brute sprang up and greeted him
with every manifestation of delight, while a man came forward from the
shadows of the trees and cried:
"Thank Heaven you are back again, Pard Seldon, for I had begun to fear
for your safety."
"And I was sure that I would never meet you again in life, Lucas, for I
believed you at the bottom of that mountain of rocks that fell from the
cliff and crushed out our little home," and the hands of the two men met
in a warm grasp.
"It would have been so but for a warning I had, when working in the
mine. I saw that the cliff was splitting and settling, and running out I
discovered that it must fall, and before very long.
"I at once got the two mules out of the canyon above, packed all our
traps upon them, and hastened away to a spot of safety. Then I returned
and got all else I could find, gathered up our gold, and came here and
made our camp.
"To-night the cliff fell, but not expecting you to arrive by night, I
was to be on the watch for you in the morning; but thank Heaven you are
safe and home again."
"And I am happy to find you safe, Lucas. I was within an eighth of a
mile of the cliff when it fell, and I shall never forget the sight, the
sound, the appalling dread for a few moments, as I fled to a spot of
safety, my horses bearing me along like the wind in their mad terror."
"It was appalling, and I have not dared leave my camp since, far as I am
from it, for it resounded through the canyons like a mighty battle with
heavy guns. But come, comrade, and we will have supper and talk over all
that has happened."
The horses were staked out up the canyon, where grass and water were
plentiful, and then the two men sat down to supper, though neither
seemed to have much of an appetite after what had occurred.
But Savage, the huge, vicious-looking dog, felt no bad results from his
fright of a few hours before, and ate heartily.
When their pipes were lighted the man who had lately arrived said:
"Well, Lucas, I brought back provisions and other things to last us a
year, and I care not to go again from this canyon until I carry a fortune
in gold with me."
"Yes, here we are safe, and I feel that something has happened to cause
you to say what you do, pard."
"And I will tell you what it is," impressively returned the one who had
spoken of himself as the Hermit of the Grand Canyon.
"Yes," he added slowly. "I will tell you a secret, comrade."