Part 5 (1/2)

On arriving at Glendive Creek we found that Colonel Rice and his company of the Fifth Infantry, who had been sent there by General Miles, had built quite a good little fort with their trowel-bayonets, a weapon which Colonel Rice was the inventor of, and which is, by the way, a very useful i up intrenchments, and can be profitably utilized in several other ways On the day previous to our arrival Colonel Rice had a fight with a party of Indians, and had killed two or three of thee with his Rodman cannon

The _Far West_ was to reht, and General Miles wished to send dispatches back to General Terry at once At his request I took the dispatches, and rode seventy-five h the bad lands of the Yellowstone, and reached General Terry's ca nearly brokenbut little prospect of any o East as soon as possible to engage in other pursuits So I started down the river on the steamer _Yellowstone_, _en route_ to Fort Beaufort On the sa Generals Terry and Crook pulled out for Powder River, to take up the old Indian trail which we had left

The steamer had proceeded down the stream about twenty miles when it wason board General Whistler and some fresh troops for General Terry's co the soldiers

General Whistler, upon learning that General Terry had left the Yellowstone, asked me to carry to hih I objected, he insisted uponthat it would only detain er; as an extra inducehbred horse, which was on the boat I finally consented to go, and was soon speeding over the rough and hilly country toward Powder River, and delivered the dispatches to General Terry the saood ani, and was far more exhausted by the journey than I was

After I had taken a lunch, General Terry asked me if I would carry some dispatches back to General Whistler, and I replied that I would Captain Smith, General Terry's aid-de-camp, offered me his horse for the trip, and it proved to be an excellent aniht forty miles over the bad lands in four hours, and reached General Whistler's stea my absence the Indians had made their appearance on the different hills of the vicinity, and the troops from the boat had had several skir the dispatches, he said: ”Cody, I want to send so the Indians who have been skir all the evening long to induce so to undertake the trip, and I have got to fall back on you It is asking a great deal, I know, as you have just ridden eighty o, Cody, I'll see that you are well paid for it”

”Never et your dispatches ready and I'll start at once”

In a fewthe same horse which I had ridden from General Terry's camp, I struck out forwhen I left the boat, and at eight o'clock I rode into General Terry's ca made one hundred and twentythe dispatches, halted his command, and then rode on and overtook General Crook, hom he held a council; the result was that Crook's co, while Terry's forces marched back to the Yellowstone and crossed the river on steaent request of General Terry I accompanied the command on a scout in the direction of the Dry Fork of the Missouri, where it was expected ould strike some Indians

The first ht, as ished to get into the hills without being discovered by the Sioux scouts

Afterthree days a little to the east of north, we reached the buffalo range and discovered fresh signs of Indians, who had evidently been killing buffaloes General Terry now called on me to carry dispatches to Colonel Rice, as still encamped at the hty ht had set in with a stor when, at ten o'clock, I started on this ride through a section of country hich I was entirely unacquainted I traveled through the darkness a distance of about thirty-five ht I rode into a secluded spot at the head of a ravine where stood a bunch of ash trees, and there I concluded to re to cross the wide prairies in broad daylight--especially as ly unsaddled my animal and ate a hearty breakfast of bacon and hardtack which I had stored in the saddle pockets; then, after taking a smoke, I lay down to sleep, with my saddle for a pillow In a fewso--I was suddenly awakened by a roaring, ru to my horse, and hurriedly secreted him in the brush Then I climbed up the steep side of the bank and cautiously looked over the sue herd of buffaloes which were being chased and fired at by twenty or thirty Indians Occasionally a buffalo would drop out of the herd, but the Indians kept on until they had killed ten or fifteen

Then they turned back and began to cut up the game

[Illustration: IN THE DISTANCE I SAW A LARGE HERD OF BUFFALOES WHICH WERE BEING CHASED AND FIRED AT BY TWENTY OR THIRTY INDIANS]

I saddled my horse and tied him to a small tree where I could reach him conveniently in case the Indians should discoverit I then crawled carefully back to the summit of the bluff, and in a concealed position watched the Indians for two hours, during which ti the meat on their ponies When they had finished this work they rode off in the direction whence they had co my journey, and then I bore off to the east for several ot back on inal course, and then pushed on rapidly to Colonel Rice's caht

Colonel Rice had been fighting Indians almost every day since he had been encamped at this point, and he was very anxious to notify General Terry of the fact Of course I was requested to carry his dispatches After rele day, I started back to find General Terry, and on the third day I overhauled him at the head of Deer Creek, while on his way to Colonel Rice's caht direction, but bearing too far to the east, and so I inforuide the coood-by to the General and his officers, and took passage on the _Far West_, which was on her way down the Missouri At Bismarck I left the steamer and proceeded to Rochester, New York, where I met my family

THE LIFE OF BUFFALO BILL

I

THE LITTLE BOY OF THE PRAIRIE

Once when Buffalo Bill was a tiny boy of seven or eight his father's fa on their way to Kansas It happened that both his father and the guide were away fro Bill Cody was asleep He was suddenly awakened by hearing a noise, and saw an Indian in the act of untying and leading away his own pet pony The boy jurasped his rifle, and said,

”What are you doing with my horse?”

The Indian did not seem to be much disturbed at the little fellow's appearance, and said he would swap horses Little Bill said he would not swap The Indian only laughed at hiain that he would not swap; and in the end the big Indian, after watching him keenly for a few minutes, quietly ood exarown man the best plainsman in our history

Every boy, perhaps every hts, the ca of the plains in prairie schooners, and the wild life that belonged to as once called the Great American Desert--which now contains thousands of farms and hundreds of cities It was a hard life; but it was so full of real adventure, of actual danger, that it had its own interest to those who lived it And although it is gone now forever, it will always re part of American history to the boys of our country

That was the time when a man saved his own life day by day, absolutely and solely because he had greater courage or quicker wit than his opponent, whether that opponent was an Indian, a stage robber, a flood, a prairie fire, or any other forer To understand those days and the events and episodes as they occurred to the et into one's mind the country they lived in and traveled over It was a flat land stretching thousands of miles across the middle of the United States froe range of uarded on either side by long lines of foothills Soenerally there was nothing but the flat plains covered with a rough wild grass Between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada there were the alkali plains, unfit for human habitation All this country was inhabited by Indians who had been gradually driven ard from the Atlantic coast, who had been treated badly by white hters and hunters They considered the white man their natural prey

Whenever they saw a ”pale face” it was fair and right in their et his scalp; for hundreds of stories had been handed down frorandfathers of the way in which the white man had killed their people and driven them from the land that had been theirs for centuries