“The head of the buffalo was in striking distance. He looked like a great devil. His beadlike eyes flashed fire. The next instant I expected the horse to be pitched down the hill. I could feel myself thrown into the air and then gored to death when I struck the ground. I could see the mangled body of the dead hunter.
“While my six-shooter was a powerful gun, I knew that if I should shoot the brute in the head, the ball would not go through the mass of matted hair and the thick skull. Still there was nothing else to do. I thought my time had come. In order to hit him at all it was necessary to shoot over my left arm. In my haste I pulled the trigger too soon. The loud report startled the horse into a run and turned the buffalo. Its discharge, so near my head, gave me a terrible shock. I thought the shot had blown away all the right side of my head and I put up my hand to keep my brains from falling out, but there were neither brains nor blood on my hand. The bullet had just grazed my head and gone through the rim of my hat. That brute looked like an infuriated demon. I couldn’t have been more frightened if I had met the devil himself at the mouth of hell.
“When it was all over, I was not in a mood for challenging him again, but as he loped away, Al. ran his horse abreast and from a safe distance put a shot into his brisket. He fell dead. Believe me, I have had many close calls, but that was the one time in all my life when I was really scared.”
“What extraordinary experiences people do have in this country,” Will Mason exclaimed, as he leaned forward to light a fresh cigar. “Speaking of Ed. reminds me of a strange coincidence which happened the year after he came West.
“We had been together the year before in New York, where we had met a chap named Courtney Drake. He was a Yale man and a member of the University Club, so we saw quite a good deal of him. He was very congenial and one of the most lovable fellows I ever knew. He was married but he seldom spoke of his wife and we never met her.
“One morning we picked up the paper and were horrified to read that Mrs. Courtney Drake had shot her maid. There it was in glaring headlines, the whole wretched affair. The Drakes were one of the oldest and wealthiest families in New York and it was spicy reading for the scandal lovers I assure you.
“It seems that Drake had gotten mixed up with this woman when he first came out of college and in order to force him to marry her she told him that she was soon to have a child. He wouldn’t believe it, and how she worked it I don’t know. She must have been mighty clever, for she and her maid got hold of a baby somewhere and she made Courtney believe it was hers and that he was the father—so he married her.
“They had only been married a short time when the maid began to demand large sums of ‘hush money’ and Mrs. Drake gave her whatever she asked, for she was in mortal dread of having Drake discover the truth. The girl found blackmail so profitable she became more and more insistent in her demands and nearly drove Mrs. Drake wild. At last she could endure it no longer and in a perfect frenzy, shot and killed the maid and then the whole thing came out. Mrs. Drake was sent to prison, where she died later, but Courtney vanished utterly after the trial—no one knew what became of him.
“The next fall Ed. and I came West and two years later were up in the Jackson’s Hole country with a party, shooting. Ed. and one of the guides went out one morning to get some ducks, but in a short time they came back to camp carrying the dead body of Courtney Drake. They had come across his body on the shore of a small lake, lying face down in the mud. There was a single bullet hole in the back of his head.
“Think of his having been found out there in the wilderness by the only man in the country who knew who he was! Talk about chance,” Will sighed, “Poor devil, he was living out there under an assumed name. His family had no idea where he was. Ed. notified them and then took his body East.