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Read Ebook: Buffalo Bill's Pursuit; Or The Heavy Hand of Justice by Ingraham Prentiss
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Ebook has 2525 lines and 82416 words, and 51 pages
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 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 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'S PURSUIT.
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 ca?ons. Several hundred feet below him the river roared in its narrow, rock-bound bed. On the sloping side of this ca?on 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, but he could not locate the sound nor distinguish the words.
He rode up and down the trail, looking over into the ca?on and along its timbered slope; he let his eyes wander over the rocky hillsides opposite the ca?on.
"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 ca?on 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 ca?on slope, forming there a massy shade.
"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 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.
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 ca?on. 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.
"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."
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