Chapter I: Front Matter

Buffalo Bill’s Best Bet

OR,

A SURE THING WELL WON

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

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| Copyright, 1914 |
| By STREET & SMITH |
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| Buffalo Bill’s Best Bet |
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(Printed in the United States of America)

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

CONTENTS

PAGE
IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F. CODY 1
I. TEMPTED. 5
II. A DOUBLE REWARD FOR LIFE. 9
III. THE FORFEIT. 13
IV. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE. 21
V. BUFFALO BILL’S BET. 23
VI. OLD NEGOTIATE’S WARNING. 30
VII. BUFFALO BILL’S CHARGE. 35
VIII. A VILLAIN SURPRISED. 40
IX. THE AMBUSH. 46
X. A MYSTERY. 52
XI. THE HEART OF A WOMAN. 59
XII. BUFFALO BILL RECEIVES A LETTER. 63
XIII. PARSON BRISTOW HOLDS TRUMPS. 66
XIV. CLOSE QUARTERS. 71
XV. MARY HALE. 74
XVI. BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 80
XVII. A FOE’S GRATITUDE. 84
XVIII. PARSON MILLER VISITS THE JUDGE. 88
XIX. MERCILESS. 95
XX. THE FLIGHT. 99
XXI. AN UNEXPECTED HALT. 104
XXII. THE RED RIGHT HAND. 107
XXIII. A STARTLING APPARITION. 110
XXIV. AN UNEXPECTED SIGHT. 112
XXV. AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER. 119
XXVI. AN OLD FRIEND AND NEW FACES. 126
XXVII. THE TWO STRONGHOLDS. 132
XXVIII. THE WHITE AND RED CHIEFS. 135
XXIX. KANSAS KING, THE OUTLAW. 143
XXX. PEARL’S WARNING. 151
XXXI. BAD BURKE’S TREACHERY. 158
XXXII. THE SPECTER OF THE VALLEY. 162
XXXIII. TICKLISH WORK. 172
XXXIV. THE MEETING IN THE CAÑON. 183
XXXV. THE ANSWERED CRY. 187
XXXVI. UNCLE SAM’S BOYS. 191
XXXVII. THE FAIRY GLEN. 196
XXXVIII. THE WAR CRY. 199
XXXIX. THE MYSTERY SOLVED. 204
XL. TWO WEDDINGS. 211
XLI. THE BRANDED BROTHERHOOD. 214
XLII. THE RESCUE. 221
XLIII. A TRAITOR IN CAMP. 227
XLIV. RUNNING THE GANTLET. 234
XLV. A WARNING AND A RAID. 239
XLVI. TREACHERY. 245
XLVII. IN THE CAMP. 253
XLVIII. IN THE NICK OF TIME. 261
XLIX. AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY. 267
L. PLOTTING MISCHIEF. 274
LI. CAPTURING THE SENTINEL. 280
LII. BUFFALO BILL’S DARING. 286
LIII. BUFFALO BILL’S DEFENSE. 298
LIV. THE BATTLE WITH THE BROTHERHOOD. 304
LV. A STARTLING REVELATION. 311
LVI. THE RETURN TO RIVERSIDE. 319

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 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.

BUFFALO BILL’S BEST BET.