Part 6 (1/2)

Buffalo Bill has already told this story in his oords earlier in the book But he does not tell what it seems impossible to believe--that this boy of eleven years saved the lives of the entire outfit; and so it is well to mention the fact here The consultation which the men had while the Indians waited proved that it was useless to stay where they were

Indians began to come from all quarters and outnumbered the whites ten to one It was therefore decided to leave the train to the mercy of the Indians and make a dash for a creek where they could hide behind the embankment This was successfully carried out and they then started for Fort Kearny, walking in the water and keeping watch over the top of the bank As night caet tired and weak He could not keep up with the others, and in the exciteradually fell behind So the little felloas trudging along, his rifle over his shoulder, perhaps a hundred yards behind the party, when to his amazement he saw the feathered head of an Indian poke over the bank before him and behind the others of his party

The Indian did not see hi toward the others With the quickness and instinct which made Buffalo Bill what he was, the lad put up his rifle, and the first warning his friends had of any attack in the rear was the sound of a shot, and the sound, too, of the body of the dead Indian rolling down into the creek That was Buffalo Bill's first Indian, and the story of the boy who had saved the bull train went all over the frontier country in an incredibly short space of time

II

LITTLE BILL AT SCHOOL AND AT THE TRAPS

Now began days of trouble for the young frontier boy The family difficulties were not so serious as they had seemed at first Mrs Cody was able to keep the farood frontiers any education, she showed hio to school

Near their ho of a little schoolhouse and for the payment of a teacher as to come from the East and teach their children Mrs Cody o there to school, and after an his school days

Those e school days as we think of school now The little one-roo in it but a few boards of the simplest kind that would serve as desks, a stove, and a few, very few, books The scholars were a wild lot, quite unused to any kind of discipline There was no idea in theirwhile they were in school, or of studying very hard over their lessons In fact, their parents had had very little education, and there was nothing in all that country that made people believe in any discipline Then, too, the teacher was not a very good one

In fact, it would have been hard to get ain the East So the school was a sohts They ca as they saw fit They got a good hed over theain the school teacher, unable to cope with the the the door

In the an his first day

He was known to them all and to all their parents for miles around as the boy who had saved the bull train, as a fine shot, and as a good deal of a hero Besides this he was a terrible tease, not only to his own sisters, but to every one else's sisters

Not rew up between hihts, finally ending in the arrival of old Turk at the school The school, like all other houses, had no cellar It rested a foot or two above the ground Bill's rival in the school was a boy na When Turk arrived in search of his young master the school was in session, and a moderate amount of order had been maintained for some time Then suddenly the scholars and the teacher heard beneath therowl, then another, then a series of howls and cries And everyone knew that within a few inches of theht in progress That was enough for the scholars They juh the door, and stood around the schoolhouse watching Turk and Gobel's dog fight Each dog was urged on by one of the two factions It was not long before Turk had beaten his rival and driven hi Gobel said that although his dog h for the young frontier boy, and, in spite of all the teacher could do, a ring was soon forht started Gobel was er and older than Will, and the latter knew that he would be beaten shortly He e to us now, out on that frontier, and especially to a boy who had actually been obliged to kill ht was right So the little fellow thinking all the tile, drew his knife and stuck it into the fleshy part of Steve Gobel's leg The moment Steve saw the blood he screamed with terror and cried out that he was killed

Thereupon all the children took to their heels and ran to tell their parents that Will Cody had killed Gobel Then the teacher took a hand, and so did the parents of o hard with poor Bill At all events, he did not care to stay at ho what else to do, he ran away down the trail, happening to coon trains of his first employers, Russell, Majors & Waddell, as he ran The boss of the outfit was a man named Willis, and when the boy told his story Willis proain as a boy extra, first offering to go back to the school with him and lick Gobel, and the teacher too, if Bill said so It was only a few moments when Gobel's father and a couple of men came up to arrest the boy, but they had to deal withevery day of their lives, and the pursuers soon discovered that it ise for theo ho Cody at present, and so he again beca this short terhters the boy had another experience which nearly ended his career, and which to any boy who lives in a pleasant home and never sees any such life can scarcely be much more than a fairy tale, it is so terrible and see to do between trips in the winter, and he decided, astrip with a party of trappers There was a chance oftheir furs As aBill contributed distinctly his part to the family treasury It was in the midst of this trip, while he was in an absolutely uninhabited country,a round of his traps, that he ca a pony loaded with skins It was a case of three to one, and the moment he discovered the Indian put up his rifle and aim it at him Here was a case, one of thefrontier boy unquestionably saved his life by his own quickness and skill Actually before the Indian, as no greenhorn at such matters, could aim his rifle and fire, Will Cody had shot him dead The other two Indians fired arrows, one of which went through the boy's hat; but without stopping, he turned around and cried, as if to his companions:

”Here they are! This way! This way!”

And then--all this taking place in an incredibly short space of time--he wounded one Indian with his revolver as the two turned and fled; so that, instead of being killed himself, he killed one Indian, wounded another, overcame the third, and marched into caathered

It was on a si episode occurred The boy had been so successful and had made soany party of ot up an expedition of his oith a friend of his naht an ox-teaon and started out They were after beaver, and when they were somewhere in the vicinity of Fort Leavenworth they struck a country full of beaver dams Here they camped in a cave in the hillside which they fixed up for a perht and went to work setting their traps At every hour of the day and night they were likely to run upon Indians, who never waited to parley, but killed whatever whitetheht have fallen

These two boys, therefore, were constantly on the watch Every bush, every tree, every rock,this instinct, just as a sailor on a shi+p will see a sail that anyone else ht think was a cloud or a speck on the horizon, these boys of the plains could discover, in a range ofthat was unusual or unexplainable A little spot of color in a tree or bush that was not exactly the color of a winter leaf would htest impression in the earth which was different from impressions left there by nature meant the trail of a party of Indians Every instant while they wereover the country round about to pick out any one of these tiny but unusual signs

The boys had been attending to their work of trapping for ht they caan to bellow and leap about The boys grabbed their rifles, ran to the corral, and discovered that a bear was in the vicinity Phillips fired first and wounded the anie The boy just ed to leap out of the bear's hen Bill fired into his mouth and killed him But it was a close call, as the dead beast fell actually on the body of Phillips It was a case of having saved the boy's life, and the chance of returning the favor came only too soon

It was the next day, when Bill Cody slipped and broke his leg The other boy carried hi, and stopped the bleeding; and then the two sat down to decide what should be done The nearest settlement was a hundred miles away It was absolutely impossible for Cody to walk that distance His friend could not carry hiiven the two oxen one had killed itself, and the other had becosters were to do they did not know No one was nearer than a hundredthat distance Yet it was a case of starving to death or of doing so at once Therefore the two trappers, hardly fourteen years old, decided that Phillips should start at once and walk the hundred o and come back would take hi in a cave for Bill, without his having the power even to get up and go outside Yet there was nothing else to do, and the good nerve of the two boys was sufficient for the occasion

Phillips made Cody as comfortable as he could and put all the food they had near hiured out just how much he was to eat each day in order to hold out until assistance should be brought, and then shaking hands, Phillips left him

The poor boy felt too lonely and heartbroken to eatin the first day or two He counted the days as they passed by cutting a notch in a stick of wood each day Gradually his leg healed, and in the course of teeks he could move about a little That alone relieved the pressure of loneliness, for hobbling to theoutside was a very different thing fro perfectly still in one position day after day He tried to use up so the school books which his mother had asked him to take with him, and it was in the midst of one of these atteain what he had already read a dozen ti inside the cave gazing at him

[Illustration: HE LOOKED UP AND SAW INDIANS IN WAR PAINT STANDING INSIDE THE CAVE, GAZING AT HIM]

In a moment a dozen or ht his last day had coer tiave any white man to live if they were in a position to put hiuttural tones, without changing his expression at all, said: