CHAPTER XV.
AT DANGER DIVIDE.
Several weeks after Buffalo Bill had taken leave of his friends of Fort Larned, he stood one day upon the veranda of a little hotel in the frontier settlement of Danger Divide, when a young man came up, and, taking him by the arm, led him courteously to the other end of the veranda.
“Mr. Doyle, let me introduce to you Colonel Cody, the chief of scouts of the Department of the Platte.”
The speaker was a tall, handsome sun-tanned young man, whose frank, honest look and kindly, smiling eyes would at once have prepossessed any one in his favor.
The man to whom he spoke was old enough to have been his grandfather. His appearance was distinguished, but his face bore deep lines that spoke of some great sorrow which had clouded his life.
The old gentleman rose from the chair in which he was sitting and bowed courteously to the man who was being introduced to him.
“Any friend of yours, Mr. Mainwaring, honors me by his acquaintance,” he said. “But it gives me especial pleasure to meet Colonel Cody. I have heard much about his great deeds out here in the West, and now that I see him I am sure that nothing I have heard has been exaggerated.”
“I am delighted to meet you, sir,” replied the scout.
“I heard you make a speech in the Senate two years ago, when I was in Washington on some business with the War Department,” he added cordially.