BUFFALO BILL’S RUSE OR, Won By Sheer Nerve

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, 1906 and 1907

By STREET & SMITH

Buffalo Bill’s Ruse

(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 RUSE.

CHAPTER I. PIZEN KATE.

The ungainly female who came roaring into Eldorado in search of the husband who “run away” from her contrived to draw a crowd about her in a remarkably short time.

“I’m Pizen Kate, from Kansas City!” she yelled. “Git out of my way, er I’ll jab yer eye out with my umbreller. I’m lookin’ fer my husband, and you ain’t him. Think I’d take up with a weasel-faced, bow-legged speciment like you? Not on your tintype. I wouldn’t! So, git out o’ my way!”

The man had tried to “chaff” her and had roused her ire, but he fell back before the angry jabs of her “umbreller.”

She looked about, glaring.

She was “homely as sin.” Her features were not only irregular; they were twisted, gnarled, and seamed. A few thin hairs of an attempted beard floated from a mole on her chin, and on her upper lip there was a faint trace of a mustache. She was dressed in a soiled cotton garment, and on her head was a shapeless hat, with a faded red rose for ornament. In her muscular right hand she flourished an ancient umbrella.

“I heard my husband had come here, and I’m lookin’[6] fer him,” she declared. “He run away from me in Kansas City, and I set out to foller him; and I’ll foller him to the end o’ the earth but that I git him.”

“I’m bettin’ on you, all right!” called out some irreverent individual.

She fixed him with a glassy stare.

“Was I ’specially directin’ my langwidge to you?” she demanded. “I hate to hear a horse bray out that way. It’s sickenin’.”

“And I hate to hear the blather of a nanny goat!”

She lifted her umbrella.

“Say that ag’in, you red-headed son of a scarecrow, and I’ll ram this umbreller down yer neck and open it up inside of ye! I’d have you know that I’m a lady, and don’t allow no back talk.”

“What kind o’ lookin’ feller is your husband?” another asked.

“Well, he’s better-lookin’ than them that slanders him, if he is little and runty! He’s a small man, slim as a blacksnake, and wiry as a watch spring, and he’s a bit oldish. He was in this town less’n a week ago.”

“Kate, I reckon we ain’t met up with him.”

“Wot’s his name?” said another.

“What’s that got to do with it, if ye ain’t seen him?” she demanded.

She fixed her eyes on a man who had, a moment before, descended the steps of the Golconda Hotel, and who came now toward the crowd that hedged her in.

The man was Buffalo Bill; handsome, muscular, dressed in his border costume, and towering a full head over the other men in the street.

[7]

“That’s him, I reckon, Katie—there comes yer husband, I’m bettin’. You said he was little and runty, slim as a blacksnake, and wiry as a watch spring. I guess you hit his trail here, all right.”

It was the sort of humor this crowd could understand, and they roared hilariously.

Pizen Kate ignored them with fine scorn, and moved toward the great scout, the men falling back before her jabbing umbrella and giving her ample room. She pranced thus up in front of Buffalo Bill, and stood eying him, umbrella in one hand and the other hand on her hip.

“I think I seen you onct,” she announced, as the scout politely lifted his big hat to her.

“Possibly,” he said, smiling.

“You’re Persimmon Pete, the gazeboo what run away with my old man.”

The crowd snickered, and then roared again.

“Hardly,” said Buffalo Bill.

“Oh, I know ye!” was her vociferous assertion. “You come to Kansas City with an Injun medicine company, and lectured and sold medicine. And my old man went to your show and seen ye; and then he got magnetized by ye, somehow, and wandered off after you when you went away. He was dead gone on big men. I suppose that was because he was so durn little and runty himself. It made him like big men. And so he follered you off when you left town. Now, ain’t that so? I know ye. You’re Persimmon Pete.”

[8]

The scout lifted his hat again, flushing slightly, for he heard the roars of the crowd.

“Madam,” he said amiably, “I must deny the gentle insinuation. I never saw your husband, nor Persimmon Pete.”

“You deny it?” she shrieked.

“Certainly. I am compelled to doubt your word.”

“And you never seen my man?”

“I assure you that I never had that pleasure. What is his name?”

“If you’re goin’ to start in by lyin’, it don’t make no difference what his name is!” she declared.

“It might help in his identification,” he suggested.

“Well, then, it’s Nicholas Nomad.” She faced toward the snickering crowd. “Now laugh!” she yelled. “It’s his name, and it fits him; fer if he ain’t about next to no man I dunno it. Think of him leavin’ me in the suds there in——”

“Was ye washin’?” some one yelled.

“Well, yes, I was, though how you know it I can’t guess. I was washin’ that day fer Mrs. McGinniss and her six children, and so I had to stay at home and couldn’t watch him. He took advantage of it and skun out. But I’ll git him yit, and when I do——” She shook her red fist at the crowd.

“You’ll wallop him?”

“Wallop him? He’ll think he’s been mixed up in a barbed-wire cyclone; I won’t leave an inch of hide on him.” She turned back to Buffalo Bill. “Ye ain’t seen him, you’re sure?” she said anxiously.

“I’m sorry to say that I haven’t, madam.”

[9]

“You ain’t lyin’ to me?”

“No.”

She gave him a fierce glare, and then turned to hurl back some words of defiance to the shouting and laughing crowd.

“Don’t git too clost to me!” she warned. “I’m a lady, and I won’t stand it.”

Then she moved on up the street, looking for her husband, the crowd of amused men and boys streaming after her. Buffalo Bill followed her movements with an amused smile.

“Cody,” said the hotel clerk, who had come down into the street, “I’ve seen all sorts of females in my day, but she takes the cake.”

Buffalo Bill laughed and turned back toward the hotel.

“A bit peculiar, to say the least,” he agreed. “I don’t think I ever saw another just like her. But we’re likely to meet all kinds of queer characters out here in the West.”

[10]

CHAPTER II. READY TO GO.

The man whom Buffalo Bill had come to Eldorado to meet appeared in the town some time after this spectacular entrance of Pizen Kate, and sought the famous scout, in the latter’s room at the hotel.

The name of this man was John Latimer. He lived in isolated grandeur in a big house on Crested Mesa, for the benefit of his health, he said, which had been weakened by the damp and trying climate of the East.

He was an elderly man, of impressive appearance; gray-haired and gray-bearded. His eyes were gray, and were overhung by bushy gray eyebrows. He dressed neatly, in the Eastern fashion, and seemed very much out of place in this wild border country, at that time.

These things Buffalo Bill noted, as John Latimer came into the room, shook hands, and took the chair placed for him.

“Ah, Cody!” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come, even though I had made my complaint so strong.”

“Your appeals stirred the colonel of the regiment at Fort Sinclair, and he told me to come out here and look into the thing and report to him at once; and he gave me authority, likewise, to send for a company of men, or even to organize a company of border riflemen on my own account, for quick action, if I thought necessary.”

[11]

“Very good!” said Latimer. “That pleases me. You shall have all the proofs you want.”

“I’ve already been getting some of them, on my way here.”

“You heard of that last raid made by the road agents on the Double Bar Ranch?” said Latimer.

“Yes.”

“And the attack of the Redskin Rovers on the treasure train which a week ago came out of the Bighorn Hills?”

“I heard of that, too. You have means of knowing something of the movements of these men?”

“Very little. The Redskin Rovers puzzle me.”

“Are they really Indians, or are they white men disguised as Indians?”

“Genuine Indians, I think.”

“Perhaps led by white men?”

“Perhaps so.”

“They haven’t troubled you lately?”

“Not lately.”

“Nor the white road agents?”

“They shot one of my herders less than a week ago. I believe they thought him a miner with gold. He was dressed somewhat like a miner, and he was coming out of the hills with filled saddle pouches. But the pouches held only some mineral specimens I had asked him to get for me. That trip cost him his life, poor fellow.”

“You know where that place is? We can, perhaps, find their trail there even yet.”

“You are ready to go with me, Cody?”

[12]

“That’s what I came for.”

“And I came in to get you and take you out to my place.”

“You spoke of your herder. Are you running a cattle ranch?”

“Not a ranch; but I keep a few, a very few, cattle. I am living there simply for the benefit of my health.”

His clear skin, the breadth of his shoulders, his general look of good health, in spite of gray hairs and gray beard, did not indicate that his health needed any especial care, as the scout noted.

“When will you go, Cody?” he asked.

“Any time. Now, if you like.”

“Now it is, then. We’ll start as soon as you can get ready.”

“I am ready.”

They left the room together.

In the hotel office Buffalo Bill ordered his horse brought from the stable and made ready for him, and he paid his score. Latimer’s horse had been left in the street in front of the hotel, tied to a hitching post. In a little while the scout and Latimer were mounted; and they galloped together out of the town of Eldorado, drawing many remarks from those who saw them go.

One of the witnesses of their departure was Pizen Kate. She had been having a dispute with a German shoemaker, who declared he had seen her missing husband the week before, and that he had but one leg, a statement that Pizen Kate disputed so warmly that the German was willing to modify it.

[13]

“Vell, he mighd haf had two legs,” he admitted, “but one of dem vas of wood. He come py my shop in, and ven he put oop his foot here, to have me fix his shoe, he say he is no man, as he haf but one leg.”

“But he didn’t say he was Nicholas Nomad! He didn’t say that?”

“No; I didn’t ask him vat vas his first name.”

Perhaps the German was a bit of a joker, for when he said this his blue eyes twinkled.

Pizen Kate stopped her wordy and interesting dispute with him, and stared at the horsemen who went by—Buffalo Bill and John Latimer.

“You know them men?” she snapped.

“Neider uff dhem vas the man vat I see. Neider of dhem vas your hoosbant.”

“Who said they was?” she snapped. “I said did you know ’em?”

“One I haf seen pefore. But I ton’d know heem.”

“You don’t mean Buffalo Bill, the tallest of ’em?”

“No; I ton’d know him. I neffer haf seen him. Bud I t’ink me I voult like to haf dhe chob uff making his poots for him. Dey musd cost apout dwendy-five tollars a pair.”

She left him in a hurry.

“I’m goin’ to find out why them two fellers aire ridin’ out of this place so fast,” she threw back at him. “It looks curious. I wonder if they don’t know somethin’ about my missin’ husband? Huntin’ fer missin’ husbands is terrible tryin’ work.”

[14]

CHAPTER III. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.

When Buffalo Bill arrived with Latimer at the home of the latter on the Crested Mesa, he found a big, rambling building, with many wings, together with a number of other buildings and stables. Close by flowed a stream of water between high and rocky banks, where, Latimer said, his few cattle obtained their water. The place looked deserted.

But a great surprise came to the scout when, on riding up to the big house, he was about to dismount, and a servant came rushing out to take the horses. He stared, open-mouthed, hanging half out of his saddle, for when his eyes fell on this servant he had been swinging to the ground, and that sight had stopped all movement on his part for an instant.

The servant was a wizened little man, with a wide mouth and small, peering eyes. He was dressed in a half-border manner, and a revolver was belted to his waist.

“Nick Nomad!” was the name that came from the scout’s lips.

Old Nick Nomad seemed as much taken aback as Buffalo Bill. He halted in confusion; then laughed in his quaint cackling manner, and advanced toward the horse.

“Yours to command, Buffler!” he cried, spreading his homely mouth in a huge grin. “You didn’t reckon[15] on seein’ me, and I didn’t reckon on seein’ you, and so we’re both properly astonished. But I ain’t a-goin’ to hold it agin’ ye.”

The scout swung to the ground, and seized the little man by the hand, shaking the hand warmly.

“Nomad, I am glad to see you!”

“Ther same hyar, Buffler! I’m as glad to see ye as if I’d run a splinter in my foot. What ye doin’ hyar?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Me? Waal, I’m in hard luck jes’ now, fer a fac’. And so I’ve become a sort of hostler hyar, ye see. I look after ther hosses, and——”

John Latimer was looking on in surprise, and the garrulous old trapper subsided, seeing it.

“I’ll have a long talk with you later,” said the scout. “I’m the guest of Mr. Latimer, and shall probably be out here several days. By the way, Nomad, what do you know of Indians and road agents?”

“They’re all dead, so fur’s I know, Buffler.”

“You haven’t seen any lately?”

“Nary a pesky red, an’ not a single pizen road agent.”

“That’s strange. Mr. Latimer has reported that he had lately been raided by road agents and by the Redskin Rovers?”

“Waal, ye see how ’tis, Cody. I only come hyar yistiddy, and so I can’t be considered as bein’ ’specially up in ther happenin’s hyar and hyarabouts. But if thar’s road agents and Injuns floatin’ round, I’ll begin to feel that I’ve arrove ahead o’ time in ther happy[16] huntin’ grounds. I ain’t hed no good times at all, sense the days when you and me was huntin’ Injuns and road agents together.”

The scout, though anxious for a talk with old Nick Nomad, saw that John Latimer had dismounted and was waiting to accompany him into the house.

“Well, take my horse, Nomad,” he said. “By the way, Nick, where is old Nebuchadnezzar.”

A whinny came from the nearest stable; and old Nomad, hearing it, bent double with cackling laughter, so pleased was he.

“Thar he is, Buffler, ther ole sinner! He knows his name as well as some men know the name o’ whisky, and he answers jes’ as quick. He heard ye say ‘Nebbycudnezzar’ and he answers ye! How long’s it been, Buffler, sense that wise critter heerd your gentle voice, anyhow?”

“More than a year, I think.”

“Jes’ ther same, he’s rec’nized it. Buffler, I’ve seen wise hosses in my time, but Nebby goes ahead of ther best of ’em. He’s a-gittin’ so knowin’ that I’m acchilly askeered that some mornin’ I’ll wake up and find that he’s been translated to ther hoss heaven, if thar is one.”

Having started on his favorite subject, old Nick Nomad would have gone on indefinitely, if Buffalo Bill had not snapped one of his sentences in the middle by practically deserting him and entering the house with Latimer.

The thing that first arrested Buffalo Bill’s attention within the house was that the big, rambling structure[17] was apparently without occupants. One servant had come to the door, to admit them—a Mexican of villainous aspect and slinking mien—but aside from this one Mexican not another soul was to be seen.

“You appear to be quite alone here?” the scout suggested.

“Yes,” Latimer admitted, “quite alone.”

“You have been here alone from the first?”