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.
BUFFALO BILL, PEACEMAKER.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRISONER IN THE DUGOUT.
Fate was in a very capricious mood when Buffalo Bill and his pards carried their activities into the Lone Star State. They galloped over the plains and plunged full tilt into one of the most surprising misplays ever made by that arrant gamester—Chance.
There was a triangle of blunders, and it so happened that there was a pard in each corner, ready to take advantage of what came his way and turn misfortune into fortune for Cattleman Perry, his daughter Hattie, and a worthy cowboy of the name of Dunbar. The powerful clique of cattle barons were beaten at their own game of freeze out—and for this they had the scout and his pards to thank.
Buffalo Bill dropped into his corner of the complication on the wide grazing grounds, en route to the town of Hackamore, where he was to join Wild Bill, old Nomad, the trapper, who had shared many dangers with the scout, Baron von Schuitzenhauser, his Dutch pard, and Little Cayuse, his Indian trailer. And when it is said that he “dropped” into the complication, the statement is to be taken literally.
It was a night, a night made brilliant by moon and stars. The scout was two days from Portales, New Mexico, having diverged from the trail taken by his pards in order to halt for half a day in the town of Texico.
Buffalo Bill was off the trail, a plainsman having shown him a short cut that was to save many miles of saddle work. As Bear Paw forged ahead at a slow, steady gallop, the scout rocked gently in his saddle, half dozing.