Buffalo Bill’s Pursuit OR, The Heavy Hand of Justice

BY

Colonel Prentiss Ingraham

Author of the celebrated “Buffalo Bill” stories published in the Border Stories. For other titles see catalogue.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION

PUBLISHERS

79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright 1907

By STREET & SMITH

Buffalo Bill’s Pursuit

(Printed in the United States of America)

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.

IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F. CODY (BUFFALO BILL).

It is now some generations since Josh Billings, Ned Buntline, and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, intimate friends of Colonel William F. Cody, used to forgather in the office of Francis S. Smith, then proprietor of the New York Weekly. It was a dingy little office on Rose Street, New York, but the breath of the great outdoors stirred there when these old-timers got together. As a result of these conversations, Colonel Ingraham and Ned Buntline began to write of the adventures of Buffalo Bill for Street & Smith.

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 rôle 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[2] 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 Rough Riders 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 (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.

[5]

BUFFALO BILL’S PURSUIT.

CHAPTER I. THE VOICE FROM THE TREE.

Buffalo Bill drew rein and looked around. He was in a narrow and lonely trail that ran close by the Cinnabar River.

The country was gullied and cut by small cañons. Several hundred feet below him the river roared in its narrow, rock-bound bed. On the sloping side of this cañon was a number of trees, some of them of large size; and trees of the same kind bordered the trail.

The scout, having drawn rein, sat quite still in his saddle, listening. All he heard now was the roar of the stream, the soughing of the wind in the trees, and the restless champing of his spirited horse.

“Help!”

A sudden cry of distress sounded near him, and once more Buffalo Bill stared around.

The call seemed to have come out of the sky, or to have floated from the mist that rose above the tumbling water of the river.

“Can my ears have fooled me?” was his thought.

“Hello!” he called. “What is it?”

A faint mumbling seemed to come in answer to this,[6] but he could not locate the sound nor distinguish the words.

He rode up and down the trail, looking over into the cañon and along its timbered slope; he let his eyes wander over the rocky hillsides opposite the cañon.

“The wind is fooling me!” was his thought. Yet he was not satisfied to let it go at that; so he dismounted, tied his horse, and swung down the incline of the cañon for a number of yards, and there reaching a shelf of rock, he bent over the river and listened. Then he heard it again—a cry for help.

This time it seemed to be above him, almost over his head; and it sounded so startlingly clear that he could have fancied that the lips that made it were at his elbow.

“Yes,” he said, starting up and staring around. “Where are you? I see no one.”

The call rose louder and clearer, so clear that it was absolutely startling. Apparently, the one making the cry had, for the first time, become aware that the call for help had reached human ears.

“Here I am, right here! Help! I’m right here—in this tree!”

Buffalo Bill rose to his feet and stared hard at the tree before him. It was within six yards of him, higher up toward the level where lay the trail; and the voice had seemed to come from the heart of it. Yet he could see no hole in the tree.

It was a large, stubby oak, wide branching and low; its thick boughs extended along the cañon slope, forming there a massy shade.

[7]

“Yes!” he said, jumping toward it. “In the tree? Where?”

The voice seemed now to gurgle, and again the answer was so indistinct that Buffalo Bill climbed up to the tree, and walked around it, determined to find an opening, if there was one.

“In the tree?” he asked. “In this tree?”

He kicked on it and hammered on it with his knuckles.

“Yes!” the voice now screamed, seeming to be right before him. “I’m—fast—in—this—consarned—tree! Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p!”

“Yes!” said the scout again, shouting the word. “How did you get in? And how can I reach you?”

“I—fell—in! Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p!”

“Fell in? How? When——”

“Fell in at the top, you fool! Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p!”

The voice had a strange, quavering sound, high-keyed and singular.

“Fell in from the top!” The scout looked at the thick top of the tree. “Well, this must be investigated!”

He began to climb the tree, using his lariat to aid him, looping it around the tree and around his body, thus assisting himself materially in making the ascent. He climbed rapidly in this way, and was soon in the lower branches.

The voice continued to call, sometimes sounding loud and clear, and then almost falling, or seeming to fall, to shrill whispers.

[8]

He fancied these changes were due to the wind that roared through the top of the tree, carrying the sound first one way and then another.

In a very short time he was in the matted top of the oak, hanging over the cañon. Then, to his amazement, he saw before him a large hole, such as a bear might have used. The calls were coming from this hole.

He looked into it, but the hole was black as pitch, and he could see nothing. However, the words of the person down in it seemed now to be shot at him as if from the muzzle of a gun.

“Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p! I’m in the tree; and I——”

“Yes—yes! I’m here to help you. How far down are you? I can’t see you.”

“Something’s stoppin’ up the hole now; it’s a bear mebbe! Help! H-e-l-p!”

“I am shutting the light out, I suppose. I want to help you. If I lower my lariat can you get hold of it? Then perhaps I can pull you out, or assist you to get out.”

The calls changed in their character; the person in the tree had become aware that some one was at the opening, and that this some one was proffering assistance.

“Drap yer rope, then!” the voice shrieked. “I kin climb it, mebbe.”

The scout lowered the noose end of his lariat into the hole.

[9]

“Just place the noose under your arms,” he instructed, “and I can help you out.”

He felt the rope jerked, and then the voice shouted:

“All O. K. down here; now h’ist away. You’re a stranger, but a friend in need; and a friend in need is wuth a dozen angels any day o’ the week!”

Buffalo Bill began to haul on the rope, and was instantly aware that the individual in the tree was ascending. There was much scratching, sputtering, and fussing, and many singular exclamations; but slowly the tree prisoner ascended. Then the scout beheld the top of a head, surmounted by a queer hat, or bonnet; so that, at that first glance, he thought he had an Indian in the loop of the lariat.

However, when the neck and shoulders, and then the body of the prisoner appeared, he saw that he had drawn a woman out of the tree.

The fact was amazing, and this woman was as singular a creature as he had ever seen: being a tall, raw-boned, awkward female, with a vinegary countenance, and features as homely as if they had been copied from some comic monthly.

“Hello!” she sputtered, as she clutched the edge of the hole and began to draw herself out. “This here is what I calls an unfort’nit condition fer a lady to be in. B’ jings, it is! An’ I reckon I’ve et a peck o’ dirt and rotten wood, into the barg’in!” She spat pieces of wood out of her mouth, revealing a row of fanglike teeth. “And I’ve that mussed up my Sunday clo’es that I won’t be able to go to church nex’ Sunday!”

[10]

At this she cackled in a strange way, as if she had uttered a good joke.

With the scout’s assistance, she crawled out of the hole and dropped down in the nest of broad limbs that were matted together in front of the hole, forming there a sort of shelf of verdure.

“Well, may I be switched if I was ever in sich a reedicklus situation before!” she grumbled. “I reckon you never before pulled a lady out o’ the top of a tree?”

The scout was staring at her most ungallantly.

“I didn’t,” he admitted. “I must beg your pardon if I was rough while hauling on that rope.”

“Oh, I ain’t as light as swan’s-down!” she cackled. “I’m purty hefty; and heftier still when I git my mad up and git in a fight.”

“But how did you get in such a place?” he was forced to demand.

“I fell in.”

“Fell in?”

“You kin understand words, can’t ye? Yes, I fell in.”

“But——”

“Well, I clim’ up here last night, thinkin’ it’d be a safer place to spend the night in than down on the ground, with wolves howlin’ ’round, and mebbe road agents perambulatin’ along the trail. It looked like a good sort of a nest up here, and I thought I’d try it fer safety; fer I cal’lated that if a wild cat, er a panther, got into the tree, I could git down, mebbe; and I wasn’t as afeard o’ them as I was o’ the wolves[11] I heerd howlin’. And so I clim’ up. And while mussin’ ’round here on these limbs, tryin’ to make myself comfortable, I slipped into that hole, hurtin’ my arm some; and then, fust thing I knowed, I was down in the holler of the tree inside, and couldn’t git out ag’in.”

She laughed in a mirthless way.

“Well, you better believe that I was scai’t some, when I found I couldn’t git out. I wiggled and I waggled, but it didn’t do no good; and there I had to stay.”

She laughed again, with that singular, mirthless cackle.

“Well, I was safe enough from wolves and varmints of that kind; you’d better believe I was. I didn’t hear a wolf, ner did a single wild cat er panther try to pay me a visit; but when mornin’ come I couldn’t git out.

“I reckon I hollered so much that if the breath I wasted doin’ it was all collected, it’d fill the sails of the British navy. But it didn’t do a mite o’ good, seemed like, till bime-by I reckon you heerd me.”

“Yes, I heard you. Your yells were enough to wake the dead!”

She glanced down into the hole and shivered.

“Now, if you’ll permit me, I’ll try to help you down to the ground,” he said.

“Oh, law, I kin make that all right; that don’t trouble me a little bit!”

To show that it did not, she swung down from the nest of branches, and then, grappling the tree as if[12] she were a man, she slid down to the ground. The scout followed her, and soon stood beside her on the shelving slope.

“Now I’ll help you up to the trail,” he said. “You must be pretty well exhausted by this time, and——”

“Lawk, I don’t need no help!”

She began to scramble up to the trail.

The scout accompanied her, assisting her as much as she would let him; and soon they stood together in the trail.

[13]

CHAPTER II. PIZEN JANE, OF CINNABAR.

Having arrived at a position in the trail, Buffalo Bill looked more carefully at the woman rescued from her strange prison in the hollow oak overhanging the cañon of the river.

The woman looked as intently at him, with black eyes that snapped and burned. She inspected him from top to toe, critically, as if trying to size him up and determine what character of man he was. Then a sudden fiery wrath blazed in her black eyes, her lips became pinched, and then opened in one of her strange cackles.

“I guess,” she snapped, “that you’re the man that’s playin’ the fake Buffler Bill trick about here. And if ye aire, then I dunno but I’d ruther been left in the tree than to have been helped by ye. Aire you him, er ain’t ye?”

Buffalo Bill could not repress a smile at her manner.

“I haven’t the pleasure of knowing who this fake Buffalo Bill is, but I assure you that I am the real Buffalo Bill,” he said. “My name is Cody, as, perhaps, you have heard, and——”

She cackled again, scoffing at his declaration.

“What’s the proof of it?” she demanded.

“I shall not try to present any proof, other than my word.”

“And if you’re the fake Buffler, yer word ain’t good[14] furder’n a man could sling a steer by the tail. You ain’t the fake Buffler?”

“No, madam, I am not.”

“Why do ye call me madam, and how’d ye know I ever was married, to desarve that title? Simply because I’m oldish and have lost my good looks? You don’t know me?”

“I haven’t the honor.”

He touched his hat again, but a smile disturbed the gravity of his face.

“Well, I’m Pizen Jane, frum Cinnabar. Never heerd o’ me?”

“I never had the honor to——”

“Shucks! Don’t be so perlite. Perliteness is due, mebbe, to young girls with red cheeks and yaller hair, and eyes that keeps rollin’ at the men; but it don’t b’long in talkin’ to a woman like me, that’s seen the world, and had all her beauty knocked off her long ago.”

“I only meant——”

“Don’t mean, then, when speakin’ to me; jes’ speak yer thoughts. I know I’m homely, and my temper ain’t any purtier than my face. I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar.”

He smiled.

“I’m very glad to know you, and wish to assure you again that I am William F. Cody, known to many as Buffalo Bill.”

“Jes’ the same, I’m goin’ to watch ye!”

“That’s kind of you.”

“You mean to say by that it ain’t kind o’ me, after[15] you yankin’ me outer that hole? Well, I thank you fer that. Where you goin’?”

“I was on my way from Cinnabar.”

“Yisterday I was, too; but I got stuck in that hole, and that brought my journeyin’ to a close. I reckon, if you’re goin’ on, I’ll go with ye. You’ve got a hoss there.”

“A very good animal.”

“Glad of it; fer I’m goin’ to ride behind ye on that hoss. I don’t reckon you’ve got anything to eat?”

“Yes, I have food in my saddle pouches. I will get it for you.”

“I’m that hungry I could eat sawdust! Fer, ye see, I didn’t have any supper las’ night, an’ no breakfast this mornin’. If ’twasn’t so fur, I’d git down to that river and git me a drink.”

“I have a water bottle, which you’re welcome to.”

“Law suz, you’re a reg’lar travelin’ hotel! Well, I’m glad of it; fer I’m that hungry and dry that I can’t think straight. When I git somethin’ to eat and drink, I’ll try to see if my hat is on straight, and if my clothes sets right. Shouldn’t wonder if they don’t, sense my experience in that tree.”

She continued to talk while he procured the food and the water; and then she sat down on the ground and devoured the things he gave her. While doing it she now and then looked at him, with covert glances, and now and then she mumbled, as if talking to herself.

The scout was undeniably puzzled by this woman. In his experience on the border he had encountered[16] many strange characters. Sometimes he had found that their eccentricity was assumed as a mask and covered some hidden design, or concealed a scoundrelly and criminal past. In a few cases he had found that an assumed eccentricity concealed an officer of the law, who was masked in that way for detective work.

After brushing the crumbs out of her lap in a thoughtful manner, she looked up.

“Was you tellin’ me the truth when you said you was the ginuine Buffalo Bill?”

“Nothing but the truth,” he answered.

Her face still showed doubt.

“Lemme ask ye another question er two.”

“As many as you like.”

“Did you ever hear of a wuthless critter named Pete Sanborn?”

“I never did.”

“He used to run a little hash house down at Cinnabar, only he was too lazy to run it, and his wife done the work. He liked to gamble better than he did to work, and he’d ruther pick a man’s pockets than to git money in any other way.”

“A fellow to keep away from.”

“Well, he was. I knowed him to my sorrow. He done things lately a good deal wuss’n any of them things. I hope vigilantes will git him, and finish him.”

Her blackened and straggling teeth came together with a vindictive click.

“And you never,” she went on, “heerd of a young feller called Pool Clayton? His reg’lar name was Bruce, but he played pool and billiards so much that[17] the fellers got to callin’ him Pool; and I reckon it fit him, fer the name stuck. He’s a young man, not much more’n a boy, and I think he knowed you!”

The final sentence she shot at the scout as if it were an accusation.

“I never happened to meet him, so far as my knowledge goes.”

“He’s a young man, and rather good lookin’; more weak than really mean, I should say; and goin’ to the dogs fast, last accounts I had of him.”

“I never heard of him.”

She brushed her lap again, as if there were more crumbs in it, and looked down, as if taking time to gather her thoughts, or think of more questions. Finally she rose, shaking out her skirt.

“Now, if you don’t ’bject, I’d like fer ye to give me a lift on yer hoss, if he’ll kerry double. It’s askin’ a good deal, I know, but——”