“Yes, I guess we’ll have to call him ‘Little Buffalo Bill.’”
The boy was delighted, and his sisters shouted:
“Hello, Little Buffalo Bill.”
The boy stood back, and admired the scout for a moment, and then said:
“I wish my dad was as big an’ strong an’—an’ handsome as you be.”
The scout blushed at the frank admiration of the boy, but laughingly turned it off and suggested that they round up the scattered cattle of the settler.
CHAPTER XVII.
A TRAGEDY OF THE PLAIN.
A lonely shack left by Northern Pacific surveyors, on the rolling prairie perhaps one hundred and fifty miles east of Gallatin, showed evidence of habitation in the early morning of a balmy summer day. Ten rods away, in a sag almost hidden by sage brush, a pair of Indian ponies grazed peacefully.