WILD BILL DISAPPEARS.
Buffalo Bill had hoped to escape recognition for a time until he
could look into conditions in that locality, but he was not to be so
fortunate, as he learned the moment the four pards were alone in their
large double room.
Bozeman was only one of many of the older towns the scout expected
to visit, in prosecution of his mission, to rout the rogues who were
stealing both from the government and the nation’s charge, the red man.
“Pa-e-has-ka make um listen,” said Cayuse, as soon as the door had
closed upon the outside. “Heap bad palefaces call Long Hair ‘Buffalo
Bill.’ Pards in home of Great Father tell on string and talks.
Pa-e-has-ka get letter come Virginia City. Bad Crow warriors wait in
pass, shoot Pa-e-has-ka.”
“Where did you get that?” asked the scout of his Indian boy pard.
“All same make um believe sleep on floor Red Tiger Saloon; hear bad
paleface talk.”
“Did you learn their names?”
“One Jim Price, other all same Dave. Jim give Crows bad blankets, bad
meat, bad whisky. Dave sell Indians sand for hunting grounds, Jim pay
Dave good blankets, good meat, good rum.”
“I see; Price is the Indian agent, and Dave is a land shark?”
“Ugh!”
“And they are going to send me a fake message, purporting to come by
wire from Washington, to report at Virginia City. Then on the way I am
to be ambushed and shot by Crow bandits?”
“Ugh!”
“Where do these fellows hang out?”
“All same Red Tiger--drink heap rum.”
“Perhaps I had better run over to the Red Tiger for a little while
before turning in,” remarked the scout, once more buckling on his belt
which he had removed.
“Me go?” asked Cayuse, an appealing look in his black eyes.
“Ole Skibo like pow’ful well to tote along, Mar’s Billyum,” urged the
colored giant.
The scout laughed and said:
“Yes, if you wish, but I think it would pay you better to turn in and
sleep.”
“My sentiments, pard,” added Wild Bill, as he sought the bed.
The other three went out quietly at a side door without meeting any
one, and the noisy crowd in the barroom drowned all sound of their
egress. Five minutes’ walk brought them to the Red Tiger Saloon, a
place of ill repute, even for this wild country. There the cutthroats
and gamblers congregated, and scarcely a week in the year passed
without its tragedy at the Red Tiger. Card disputes sometimes ended in
wholesale shooting, and, only two weeks before, three funerals resulted
from one night’s rough house in the infamous inn.
When Buffalo Bill and his pards arrived the crowd had reached a stage
of drunkenness which dulled its perception, and the strangers were
unnoticed. Several men were stretched out on benches and floor in
drunken stupor, and others were drinking or wrangling as to whose turn
it was to treat. Others were attempting, with drunken persistence,
to play cards, but the stakes at the corners were knocked about by
gesticulating elbows, and coins rolled about the floor.
Cayuse looked about for a moment, and then approached the scout. In a
low tone he said:
“Price play cards with heap fool drunks; steal um money; Dave drunk.”
The scout easily picked out Price, and when opportunity offered
approached unnoticed. He also secured a good look at the debauched face
of Dave, so that he could recognize the fellow if they ever met again.
Price was too drunk to be acute, but he was still sharp enough to rake
in all the money of those with whom he was pretending to play.
Buffalo Bill closely watched the manipulations of this representative
of Uncle Sam, and was soon convinced that the fellow was an unmitigated
scoundrel who would rob his best friend if opportunity offered.
One man at the table, a miner, had been robbed of his last cent,
despite his protest of unfairness. And then the inevitable row was
started. The victim bunglingly attempted to pull a gun, and his motion
was followed by half a dozen others who were grouped about the table.
Price was not so far intoxicated as the others, and deftly jerked a gun
to a level with the other’s breast. Somebody in the crowd accidentally
or otherwise discharged a revolver. A fusillade followed, principally
into the floor and ceiling, but when the smoke cleared the man who had
been robbed by Price was on the floor writhing with a bullet through
his body, and Price was pushing through the drunken, shouting men with
a smoking revolver in his hand. He had shot the man he had robbed and
was getting away before officers arrived.
There was no doubt regarding who had shot the miner, in the mind of
Buffalo Bill.
Buffalo Bill did not care to be held to testify in the pretended
investigation which was bound to follow, so he and his friends slipped
away. The report of the coroner would be the usual one: “Shot by an
unknown in a volley by barroom crowd.”
Outside the scout awaited for a time the action of the town’s
protectors. In half an hour the sheriff arrived, and in another half
hour the Western coroner came to take charge of the remains.
Justice certainly did not move on the “hot foot” in that city of
“courage juice” and bad men.
As the scout and his faithful negro and Indian pards were moving away
there came a terrific explosion from the direction of the hotel. A
moment later a red glare sprang up, and then hoarse shouts and screams
of anguish rent the air.
“Must be a boiler explosion,” exclaimed the scout, hastening on, “and
at or near the hotel,” he added.
His worst fears were realized. The disaster had occurred at the hotel,
but it was not a boiler explosion. The entire wing in which Buffalo
Bill and his pards had been assigned quarters had been blown up by some
powerful explosive.
No other explanation was possible than that some one had placed a heavy
explosive under the wing with malicious intent, the proprietor, who was
soon found by Buffalo Bill, declared.
Hundreds of people flocked to the scene, and among them Buffalo Bill
sought for his pard, Wild Bill Hickok, the man from Laramie, the hero
of scores of daring exploits.
The wing was wrecked and the hotel burning, but the scout still hoped
that by some miracle his partner had escaped.
The night wore away, and the fire was conquered only when the hotel was
in ashes. Two other guests of the hotel were missing, and half a dozen
had been more or less seriously injured.
Buffalo Bill haunted the scene of disaster. He could not give up hope
that Hickok had escaped. But no clue was uncovered that led to any
other conclusion than that Wild Bill had perished miserably.
Then Buffalo Bill began an investigation on his own hook to discover
the author of the tragedy. Lambert, the hotel proprietor, had no idea
regarding the miscreant or his object. He--Lambert--did not know that
he had an enemy, and he could not imagine the object of any man in
destroying his property, and at the same time taking the lives of
innocent people.
The scout began to suspect that he and his pards were the object of the
dynamiters.
“Were there any inquiries yesterday,” he suddenly asked of Lambert,
“concerning the sleeping quarters of any of your guests?”
The hotel man started, and then answered:
“Yes; Dave Green asked me about you and your party--who you were and
what rooms you had. He said he guessed he would see if he couldn’t sell
you a quarter section up the valley.”
“Who was with him at the time?”
“Jim Price, the Indian agent.”
“Did you see either of these men about town after the explosion last
night?”
“Yes, I saw Price, and he said Green was laid away, ossified, at the
Red Tiger.”
“How soon after the explosion did Price appear?”
“Why, he showed up while we were trying to pull the people out of the
wreck before the fire drove us away.”
“Thank you,” said Buffalo Bill.
“Why, you don’t suspect Jim Price of anything like that, do you?”
“Oh! I thought he might prove to be a good witness if an inquiry was
made,” answered the scout.
In his own mind Buffalo Bill was satisfied that Price had attempted to
blow the scout and his pards into eternity. So far as brave Hickok was
concerned it seemed that the wretch had been successful.
Buffalo Bill had succeeded better than he had expected in the beginning
of the unraveling of the government’s skein of Indian difficulties.