CHAPTER II.
THE BAD MAN.
The night of the opening day of the trial of Red Dick, Buffalo Bill and several of his pards struck town. With the scout were Hickok, Little Cayuse, and Skibo, the giant negro. Old Nomad was on the way, and might be expected to “lite” at any hour.
The scout’s orders were direct from the secretary of the interior at Washington. The encroachments of the cattlemen and sheepmen upon the Indian reservations and various clashes with the red men were breeding discontent, and promised a serious outbreak. Buffalo Bill had been instructed, also, to quietly look into the conduct of some of the Indian agents in the Northwest. Complaints were finding their way to Washington, and the rival political party was making campaign material out of them.
If the Indians were being cheated and robbed by unprincipled officers, the department wished to make an example of said officers and preserve peace and the good will of the Indians.
Intruders were flocking upon the Indian lands in search of gold, and herds of the white men grazed where no human foot had the right to set, except that of the red man. The buffaloes, which were the main source of food supply for the Indians, were slain by thousands. Excursionists and others shot the animals, and their putrefying carcasses thickly dotted the plains.
It was coming to the knowledge of officials in Washington that there was an “Indian ring,” which included a corrupt gang of miscreants at the national capital in league with others in the West. Through this band of rascals the Indians were provided with worthless rags for blankets and wretched meat in place of the supplies called for by treaty contract and provided by the government.
By the manipulations of unscrupulous agents and land thieves the cultivated lands of the Indians were being taken from them, and tracts of deserts substituted.
Buffalo Bill well knew that the whites were trampling on the rights of the red men, and his sympathies were known among both shades of skin.