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Read Ebook: Buffalo Bill Entrapped; or A Close Call by Ingraham Prentiss
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Buffalo Bill Entrapped
OR,
A CLOSE CALL
Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
STREET & SMITH CORPORATION PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York
Buffalo Bill Entrapped
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.
IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F. CODY .
Colonel Cody was born in Scott County, Iowa, February 26, 1846. Before he had reached his teens, his father, Isaac Cody, with his mother and two sisters, migrated to Kansas, which at that time was little more than a wilderness.
When the elder Cody was killed shortly afterward in the Kansas "Border War," young Bill assumed the difficult r?le of family breadwinner. During 1860, and until the outbreak of the Civil War, Cody lived the arduous life of a pony-express rider. Cody volunteered his services as government scout and guide and served throughout the Civil War with Generals McNeil and A. J. Smith. He was a distinguished member of the Seventh Kansas Cavalry.
During the Civil War, while riding through the streets of St. Louis, Cody rescued a frightened schoolgirl from a band of annoyers. In true romantic style, Cody and Louisa Federci, the girl, were married March 6, 1866.
In 1867 Cody was employed to furnish a specified amount of buffalo meat to the construction men at work on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It was in this period that he received the sobriquet "Buffalo Bill."
In 1868 and for four years thereafter Colonel Cody served as scout and guide in campaigns against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. It was General Sheridan who conferred on Cody the honor of chief of scouts of the command.
After completing a period of service in the Nebraska legislature, Cody joined the Fifth Cavalry in 1876, and was again appointed chief of scouts.
Colonel Cody's fame had reached the East long before, and a great many New Yorkers went out to see him and join in his buffalo hunts, including such men as August Belmont, James Gordon Bennett, Anson Stager, and J. G. Heckscher. In entertaining these visitors at Fort McPherson, Cody was accustomed to arrange Wild-West exhibitions. In return his friends invited him to visit New York. It was upon seeing his first play in the metropolis that Cody conceived the idea of going into the show business.
Assisted by Ned Buntline, novelist, and Colonel Ingraham, he started his "Wild West" show, which later developed and expanded into "A Congress of the Roughriders of the World," first presented at Omaha, Nebraska. In time it became a familiar yearly entertainment in the great cities of this country and Europe. Many famous personages attended the performances, and became his warm friends, including Mr. Gladstone, the Marquis of Lorne, King Edward, Queen Victoria, and the Prince of Wales, now King of England.
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 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 ENTRAPPED.
One June night in the early seventies, the sole occupant of a lonely cabin high up in the Rockies had a bad dream. Pursued by a legion of monsters, he found himself on the verge of a bottomless pit. While he choked with terror, a terrific noise as of the bursting of a bomb dissipated the horrible illusion to which his brain had been subjected, and he awoke gasping and wild-eyed. His face was covered with a cold perspiration, and for some moments he was incapable of movement. With the return of his wits came sounds that he could distinguish. They brought him to his feet instantly. Not far away had come a succession of pistol and rifle shots.
As he hurriedly dressed, a bright light streamed in at the window. The room was brilliantly lighted up, and the man could hear the crackling of timbers, and knew that the cabin of his nearest neighbor was in flames.
Opening the door, he stepped out into the open air. The sky for a great distance presented a lurid spectacle.
Looking toward the lower end of the small flat upon which he was located, he saw, as he expected, a cabin on fire.
The crack! crack! of a rifle greeted his ears as he was on the point of starting for the cabin. What did all these shots mean? Was the fire the work of an incendiary, and had murder been added to arson?
Bart Angell, hunter, scout, and Indian fighter, as brave a man as ever stood six feet two without boots, compressed his lips tightly, and into his sharp, homely, honest face there crept an expression of grim resolution. Rifle in hand, he started on a run for the burning cabin, and was about halfway to the spot when he caught sight of a man, a stranger, running from the fire and toward the brush at the outlet of a ravine.
Crack! went Angell's rifle, and the runner, with an unearthly scream, fell to the ground.
The cabin was in ruins as the scout passed it to reach the form of the man he had shot.
He was near the victim, who was lying on his face, when he heard a faint voice calling him from the bushes on his right. He stopped, said loudly, "Who's that?" and, receiving no answer, walked quickly toward the place whence the voice had come.
The light was still strong enough for Angell to see about him, and he was near the bushes when he saw a section of the buckskin habiliments of a man who was lying on the ground.
"That you, Bart?" asked a faint voice, as the scout reached the bushes.
"Great Caesar's ghost!" ejaculated Angell, as his eyes rested on the face of the prostrate man in buckskin. "Buffalo Bill!"
The king of scouts tried to rise, but the effort was a failure. "I--I am all right, Bart," he said, with an attempt at a smile. "Lost blood that I need in my business, that's all."
Angell quickly made an examination of Buffalo Bill's hurt. He had been shot in the side, and it was impossible then to tell how serious was the injury. But after the wound had been washed and bandaged and a generous stimulant had been administered, the king of scouts diagnosed his case, and, as it proved, correctly.
"The bullet did not go straight into my anatomy, Bart. That's a cinch." He felt along his side. "It struck a rib, glanced and shot upward. I can feel it under the skin near the armpit."
"Then I'll purceed ter seperate it from yer person, old son," remarked Angell, and with his hunting knife he deftly performed this bit of surgery.
The operation over, he said: "I've shore got ter ask yer ter excuse me fer a few minutes. Thar's a measly rickaroon at the edge of ther flat that is claimin' my attention."
"Come to remember, I did hear your Peter Erastus speak just before I called to you, Bart. Did you bring down your man?"
The homely scout snorted. "Do I know how ter shoot? Buffalo, I'm ashamed on ye."
With these words he walked away, and was soon bending over the form of his victim. The man was not dead, but the end was not far off.
Angell raised the victim's head and gazed sharply into the pale face. The man was an utter stranger. He had a large mouth, a retreating chin, and little eyes set close together. Upon his face was a stubby, reddish growth of hair.
The eyes opened after some whisky had been poured down the man's throat.
"Got me fer keeps," was the hoarse remark, the little eyes blinking furiously.
"Yer shore goin' ter peter," replied Angell gravely; "an', bein' ez that aire so, it's up ter you ter tell ther truth. Why d'ye fire ther cabin an' shoot Buffalo Bill, an' whatever hev become of Matt Holmes, who lived in ther cabin?"
With a sour face, the slayer left the body and returned to the king of scouts.
"I didn't git thar in time fer a satisfactory auntymottim, as them aire crowner fellers would say," he announced. "Ther skunk went up ther flume without tellin' all he knowed about ther fire an' ther shootin'. But"--his countenance lighting up--"mebbe you kin fill in ther blanks."
"Who was the man you killed?" inquired Buffalo Bill eagerly.
"Hanged ef I know. Some ornery cuss that looks as ef he war three parts idjut."
"Is he well dressed and a good looker in the face?"
"Not by a jugful. He aire as homely as a hedge fence, and he wears the clothes of a scarecrow."
"Then the villain who is responsible for this night's work has escaped."
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