Buffalo Bill’s Boy Bugler
OR,
THE LAST OF THE INDIAN RING
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, 1909
By STREET & SMITH
Buffalo Bill’s Boy Bugler
(Printed in the United States of America)
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 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.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “RED DICK” AND “FIGHTING DAN.” 5
II. THE BAD MAN. 10
III. WILD BILL DISAPPEARS. 16
IV. BUFFALO BILL’S LITTLE JOKE. 22
V. HOW HICKOK CAME TO GRIEF. 30
VI. THE BATTLE IN THE MINE. 37
VII. RED DICK’S CHOICE. 44
VIII. PA-E-HAS-KA TRAPPED. 53
IX. OLD NOMAD FINDS EXCITEMENT. 59
X. LITTLE CAYUSE CAPTURED. 64
XI. THE DYNAMITER AGAIN. 71
XII. THE MYSTERY OF THE MOUNTAINTOP. 78
XIII. MATTERS BECOMING COMPLICATED. 89
XIV. CAYUSE TURNS A TRICK. 95
XV. BUFFALO BILL’S TRUMP CARD. 103
XVI. BUFFALO BILL’S DIFFICULT MISSION. 109
XVII. A TRAGEDY OF THE PLAIN. 117
XVIII. INTERESTING ACQUAINTANCES. 123
XIX. THE MYSTERY OF THE GULCH. 129
XX. NOMAD’S STRANGE WEAPON. 135
XXI. ANOTHER MYSTERY MET. 140
XXII. HICKOK OUTWITTED BY A THIEF. 147
XXIII. IN THE SIOUX CAMP. 155
XXIV. CAYUSE SENTENCED TO DIE. 163
XXV. THE RESCUE OF LITTLE CAYUSE. 170
XXVI. BUFFALO BILL SAVES TEN. 179
XXVII. THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR. 187
XXVIII. A SUCCESSION OF SURPRISES. 194
XXIX. THE SCOUT VISITS SITTING BULL. 203
XXX. HIDE-RACK’S ADVENTURES. 208
XXXI. THE BOY BUGLER WINS. 214
XXXII. REVENGE OF PRICE. 222
XXXIII. WONDERFUL MIRROR OF THE PLAIN. 225
XXXIV. TRAGEDY OF THE PLAIN. 233
XXXV. AN AGED INDIAN’S STORY. 240
XXXVI. THE QUEEN OE THE STARS. 246
XXXVII. THE SCOUT ON A DIM TRAIL. 252
XXXVIII. WILD BILL’S WILD RIDE. 266
XXXIX. RESCUE OF THE SUPPLY TRAIN. 273
XL. A SET-TO WITH A GRIZZLY. 280
XLI. WONDERS OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN. 285
XLII. LITTLE CAYUSE MISSING. 291
XLIII. CAYUSE FINDS OLD ENEMIES. 297
XLIV. THE PARDS VISIT THE INDIANS. 303
XLV. WILD BILL’S TASK. 310
BUFFALO BILL’S BOY BUGLER.
CHAPTER I.
“RED DICK” AND “FIGHTING DAN.”
It had come out of the long familiar war between the cattlemen and
sheepmen. “Red Dick” and “Doc” Downs, cattlemen, were on trial for the
shooting of Josh and Cabe Grey, sheep herders, and the slaughter of
three hundred sheep. A typical Western crowd had drifted into Bozeman,
including many soldiers from Fort Ellis. It was noon and the sun hung
high and blazed down relentlessly on the perspiring spectators, as
they poured out of the stuffy courtroom, at recess. Red Dick and Doc
Downs were to be taken across the street to the hotel for lunch, and
the crowd settled across the way to cheer or hiss the prisoners, as
its sympathies dictated, as the handcuffed men were led forth by the
officers.
Red Dick was known as a bad man and he looked the part. He stood six
feet three in his stockings, was straight as an arrow, and, without
an ounce of superfluous flesh, weighed 190 pounds. Contrary to the
suggestion of his cognomen, he was not of Indian descent, but below the
belt of tan at his neck the unbuttoned collar revealed skin as white as
marble. It was a mass of curly, fiery-red hair that had given Richard
Davids, from Vermont, his nickname in the West.
Red Dick’s steely gray eyes flashed, his hawk-bill nose sniffed
contemptuously, and his short-cropped red mustache twitched nervously
as he was led out of the courtroom and the hiss of his enemies fell on
his ears.
Then came hoots and howls and verbal insults, intermingled with
“tigers!” and “good boy, Dick!” “We’ll stand by you, Red!” etc.
At one time it seemed probable that the factional spirit among the
spectators would lead to riot, as the feeling ran high and the crowd
began surging back and forth about the prisoners, preventing the
advance of the officers in charge.
At that moment there was a commotion far down the street, a clatter of
pounding hoofs, a wild yell and a fusillade of revolver shots. Then
there burst on the view of the crowd a figure so startling as to, for
the moment, drive all thoughts of the prisoners from the minds of the
wrangling spectators.
It was a great, rawboned, buckskin stallion, tearing up the main
thoroughfare at a terrific pace, headed directly at the startled crowd.
Astride the animal was a man to match--a tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered
fellow in buckskin trousers and red flannel shirt, his long mustache
sweeping back about his neck and fluttering in the wind with the
corners of the handkerchief knotted there. In each hand the recognized
“bad man” carried a big revolver with which he was boring holes in the
ether by way of announcing his approach.
The horse, with wide-distended nostrils and showing belts of white
around the iris of its eyes, dashed madly at the crowd, which scattered
like chaff.
Almost upon the officers and their prisoners the big rider yelled:
“Whoa!”
The animal stopped so suddenly that it sat upon its haunches and slid
for a yard or two while the rider seemed almost precipitated over its
suddenly dropped head.
He landed squarely in front of the officers, his towering height now
seen to the full, with a gun in each hand, and leaning far forward
until his black and flashing eyes were on a level with those of Red
Dick, he bellowed:
“So yo’re ther skunk thet plugged my brothers, air ye?”
Red Dick, with all his boasted bravery and deeds of dare-deviltry,
cowered before the newcomer.
“It’s ‘Fighting Dan’ Grey!” gasped the crowd, as it scurried for
quarters beyond the line of the big guns, which they felt sure were
soon to be in action.
The officers shrank, too, and reached for their own guns in a
half-hearted way.
Big Fighting Dan disdained the motion to draw on him, except to roar:
“Keep yer pepper boxes under yer co’t tails, officers, er it’ll be bad
fer yer digestion.
“An’ so yo’re it! hey?” he boomed again.
“Waal, yo’re in ther han’s o’ ther law, jes’ now, an’ old Dan respects
ther law, but Heaven hev mercy on yore pesky hide if I ever set my eyes
onto yuh outside o’ ther clutches o’ ther sheriff an’ his men.”
Shoving his guns into his belt, the dark man continued:
“But I’m hyar an’ yo’re hyar, so now’s ther time ter pay my
complerments--an’ thar yew hev um!”
He had suddenly reached forward, and, before the officers could protest
or others divine his intention, he had grasped Red Dick by the chin
with one hand and by the curling red hair with the other, and tipped
the prisoner’s head far back. Then an amber stream left Dan’s dark
lips, and Red Dick’s face ran with tobacco juice as he was released, a
spluttering, raving, helpless wretch, while Fighting Dan turned away,
swung into his saddle, and with a few parting shots dashed down the
street and disappeared.
Taking advantage of the dazed condition of the crowd, the officers
hurried their prisoners into the hotel.
Red Dick’s handcuffs were removed to allow him to wash the tobacco
stains from his face, but he was in too much of a rage to eat. He sat
and indulged in savage mutterings by way of intrenchment of his vow to
torture Fighting Dan at the stake, if he--Dick--ever got out of the
grip of the law.
Doc Downs had little to say. He had escaped the wrath of Fighting Dan,
for which he was thankful, and the sympathy and hatred of the crowd
seemed to centre on Red Dick, rather than on him.
Doc was shrewd enough to keep still and remain in the background. Doc
was not a practicing physician, as one might infer from his nickname.
If there was anything which Doc knew less about than another, it was
the application of drugs or the uses of lance and bandage. For some
reason which never had been explained, Doc’s parents had given him the
prefix “Modoc.” As a boy he had been “Mo,” and then “Mod,” now “Doc.”
Doc wasn’t smart enough to be a first-class bad man, although he had
aspirations in that direction, and he was too indolent to earn an
honest living. So, when Red Dick, the dashing cowboy, blew into town
one day and flourished a wad that would have blocked the pathway of
a four-year-old steer, Doc hitched onto the tail of the curly-haired
comet.
There was one thing Doc could do--cook--and by means of that
seldom-exercised talent he had won the favor of Red Dick.
Doc’s allegiance to his employer had got him into this fuss. With Red
he had flourished guns and swaggered before the sheepmen on the ranges.
And one day, when the mix-up came with the Greys, Doc had closed his
eyes and blazed away as Red Dick had done. When he saw the Greys down,
rolling on the ground and groaning, he became panicky and would have
bolted, but for Red Dick, who ordered that every sheep on the section
be shot. Then the two had spent the remainder of the day in riding down
and slaughtering the innocent animals.
Doc was sorry, and he had no hesitation about saying so--when Red Dick
was beyond hearing.
The sympathies of the cattle raisers were with Red Dick, even at this
early day, for they had begun to feel the increasing encroachment of
the sheep herders on the range. The sheepmen backed the Greys, who
had been seriously wounded in the encounter, as well as sufferers
financially in the loss of three hundred sheep. The Greys were quiet,
peaceable ranchers, and considered honest by those who knew them.
Fighting Dan was the black sheep in the Grey family. Dan was big,
and fierce, and courageous, and a gambler. He tore big holes in the
atmosphere and made lots of noise, but he had never killed his man, in
spite of his reputation. Dan’s favorite method was physical, unarmed
violence. Two ordinary men were as boys in his grasp. He delighted in
seizing a disputant at cards, to whirl the victim high above the top of
his own head, which was six feet and a half above the floor.
Fighting Dan had once taken possession of a saloon that had won his
disfavor, and poured liquor down the proprietor’s throat until he was
unconscious. Dan had then set up the drinks for everybody in sight for
half a day.