Chapter I: Mysterious Letters

A singular tapping on the door of his room awoke Buffalo Bill, who was in the St. Cloud Hotel, in the town of Klamath, which was about as near to the “jumping-off place” of civilization as one could get without going over the boundary.

The wary scout remained quietly in bed when he heard the tapping, his only movement being to clutch the revolver he had placed under his pillow on retiring for the night.

The room was as dark as a “stack of black cats,” and he knew that complete darkness reigned outside, or a little light would have reached him through the window.

The tapping was repeated at intervals for the better part of five minutes, then there was a resounding thump on the panel of the door.

Shortly after that the scout heard soft footsteps moving away, and when the footsteps ceased to sound, he struck a match cautiously, and looked at his watch.

“Four o’clock!” he said. “Just the darkest hour before dawn. Daylight will be here in a little while.”

He blew out the match, and lay back quietly on his pillow, listening. Not so much as a rat now stirred.

“I wonder what that meant?” was his thought. “Well, I’m not anxious enough to know to run risks in trying to find out. Some rascal might have wanted to assassinate me. There’s no telling.”

Klamath was notorious for its desperadoes at that time, and Buffalo Bill was pretty sure that more than one man in the town would be glad to take his life.

“If any one is really anxious to see me,” was his thought, “let him come to me in broad daylight. This is no hour for an interview, and the thing didn’t look honest.”

He was out of bed as soon as the dawn came, and after hastily dressing, he took his revolver and tiptoed to the door. He more than half expected to discover that an assassin lurked in the big hall.

But when he opened the door, he was surprised in another way.

Pinned to the panel was a folded sheet of paper, held in place by a slender gold stick pin driven into the wood. The head of the stick pin was a representation of a skull and crossbones.

The resounding thump on the door had been made when this singular pin had been driven in to hold the paper in place.

Buffalo Bill looked curiously at the pin, and then spread open the paper, which he saw was a sheet of writing. This he proceeded to read:

“BUFFALO BILL: I want to have a talk with you about
something very important. I knocked on your door, and you
wasn’t in, or wouldn’t answer. Meet me to-night, at eight
o’clock, at the foot of the big poplar that hangs over the
river at the upper bend, about half a mile from here. The
place is called Poplar Bend. Don’t fail. This is as
important to you as to me, and more so. Your friend,

“KLAMATH JOHN.”

While Buffalo Bill was reading this and inspecting the queer gold pin, he heard himself addressed. His negro servant, Cudjo, was approaching along the hall, Cudjo having spent the night in the servants’ quarters below stairs.

“Marse Cody, you is up ter’ble early dis mawnin’!” Cudjo remarked, showing his ivories. “How you reckon I’m gwine to git to black yo’ boots, befo’ you puts ’em on, ef you’s gwine to put ’em on befo’ I done wakes up? I ’lowed, tired as you was las’ night, dat dis mawnin’ you’d sleep as sound’s a possum. And heah you is, awake befo’ I is. Hit’s plum’ reedic’lus an’ scan’lous.”

Cudjo felt privileged to scold his master now and then, though his chidings were always so good-natured that they had no sharp edge. He swung his tongue with so much freedom, perhaps, for the reason that he owed his life to Buffalo Bill; there seemed to be no other excuse.

Two months before, he had been a train porter, on a wild mountain route where holdups were not infrequent. Buffalo Bill had been a passenger on the train one night when a holdup came. Cudjo did not move quickly enough to suit the robbers, and one of them knocked him down and would have shot him, when a bullet from the pistol of the fearless scout put the outlaw out of business. The next moment Buffalo Bill fell, shot through the shoulder, in retaliation, by one of the outlaws.

Cudjo resigned his position and nursed the gallant scout until he recovered from the effects of the bullet wound, after which he became, for a time, Buffalo Bill’s personal servant, and was now with him in the lawless border town of Klamath.

“See here!” said the scout, and he displayed the letter and the gold pin. “Take a look at these.”

Cudjo’s face seemed to become a shade whiter through pallor when he looked at that queer stick pin.

“Did you ever see anything like that before?” Buffalo Bill asked.

“I has, Marse Cody, and I don’t want to see um ag’in. Dat’s des like de pin de car robber wore what shot you dat time. Des like it!”

The scout gave Cudjo the note to read.

“You is a dead man, Marse Cody, if you goes to dat place. Keep away f’m it. Dis is a trick.”

Buffalo Bill stayed away from Poplar Bend that evening, and also the next.

Because of this, no doubt, at about the hour of four in the morning he again heard that peculiar tapping on the door of his room. As before, he listened quietly, clutched his revolver, and said nothing. The singular thump on the panel sounded again, and again he heard footsteps moving softly away.

When he opened the door, at daylight, he found another message pinned to it, with one of those queer gold pins, a message which again asked him to meet the writer at Poplar Bend, assuring him that it concerned a matter of the utmost importance to him, as well as to the one who wrote the note.

When this happened the third morning, the gold pin and the pinned paper were discovered before the scout arose by a young Irishman named Michael Flynn—called Mike or Mickey—who occupied the room next to him.

“Begobs!” roared Flynn, hammering on the scout’s door, “the United States gover’mint has sthruck a quare sthreak in deliverin’ its letthers, so it has. Will ye obsarve this wan, Misther Cody? Here’s a letther fer ye, lift by the postman on yer dure, and hammered in wid a gold pin. It’s that rich the gover’mint is growin’ that it throws in gold pins widout cost whin it delivers letthers. ’Tis a gr-reat counthry! Will yez git up and see the letther?”

Buffalo Bill hurried into his clothing, and opened the door for Flynn.

“Come in, Mike!” he invited. “That’s the third letter of the kind which has been stuck on my door. What do you think it means? Read it and then tell me what you make of it. Remember, I’ve had two others like it.”

Flynn read the letter, which was identical with the other two received by the scout.

“And the pin?” said the scout. “Take a look at it.”

“It’s a quare wan,” said Flynn, “but I’m guessin’ it’s gold. I’ll l’ave you to shpake the m’anin’ av it.”

Cudjo appeared in the hall, and came in, as the door was open. His eyes rounded with awe and fright when he discovered that a third letter had been received.

“I’ve no idea who this fellow is who calls himself Klamath John,” said the scout, “but I’ve suspected a trap.”

“Whoosh! A trap, is it? Thin I’d trap _him_.”

“You would?”

“Shure, an’ I would. If ye want to thry it, I’m in wid ye.”

Flynn’s face flushed even redder than was its natural wont, by reason of the thought that came to him.

“It’s the iligant chance,” he went on. “An’ it’s like what I’ve been wantin’, ye see. I towlt yez about it. Whin I left the grane sod, says I to mesilf, says I, ‘There’s niver a chance anny more fer a man in Ireland!’ An’ it was the thruth I shpoke. ‘Ameriky, the land av the free, an’ the home av the br-rave, is the land f’r me,’ says I. ‘There a man can shtand up f’r his rights,’ says I, ‘an’ can crack a head when he sees wan,’ I says, ‘an’ it’s the land fer me.’

“But here I’ve been six months, and not a shindy comin’ my way. Barrin’ a fight or two wid pistols, I ain’t sane anny fightin’ at all, an’ they towlt me this town was filled wid fightin’ min and the rarest fightin’ undher the sun. But it’s a lie. There ain’t no fightin’. It’s jist pull a gun, and down yer man goes on his back in the sthrate, dead as a dure nail. I don’t call that fightin’, I call that murdher.

“And now here comes the chance f’r me. There’s a brave hint av advinture in thim letthers, as I can see. I’m wid yez in it. The man is thryin’ to trap yez, mebbe. Say that he is. So much the betther. Thrap him. And Mickey Flynn is the b’y that will help ye.”

Flynn became boisterously enthusiastic, as he thus outlined his thoughts. But Cudjo failed to share his enthusiasm.

“What ef _you_ is de man dat’s killed?” he asked.

“If yez are, hope that it’ll be quick. And if ye’re only wounded, pray to the saints that ye may have stringth to bear it. But what’s life widout the ixcitement av danger? It’s a shtale soup, widout anny pepper in it. None av it f’r me! Yez can have it. But it’s not to be ixpicted that a nagur would fale the same as an Irishman.”

Cudjo’s black eyes glittered. “Who’s a nigger?” he said testily. “Onderstand dat I is a cullud ge’men, suh! I done been a car po’ter, suh! Ef you has any oncompliments to hand roun’, don’t hand um dis way. I’m ’bleegd to incline um.”

Buffalo Bill smiled. “I agree with Mike,” he remarked. “If that man is trying to draw me into a trap, we may be able to turn the tables on him. Anyway, I’d like to know the meaning of these letters. My curiosity is excited. He’s persistent, for this is his third letter.”

Mike looked curiously at the gold pin.

“He must be moighty rich,” he observed, “to be flingin’ his gold about in this way, I’m thinkin’. An’ a quare pin it is. Luk at it.”

Buffalo Bill took the other gold pins from his pocketbook, and laid all three in the palm of his hand for inspection.

“Des like de one what dat car robber wore fo’ a breast pin,” said Cudjo. “I don’t want to see de man what has um. Dat man is a robber, and mebbe wuss’n dat. If Marse Cody axes my devices, I’m ‘bleeged to tell him to stay away f’um de place whar dat man says to come. Stay plum’ away f’um it. We’se safe heah in dis hotel. What’s de use tuh be runnin’ into undnecessary danger? Dem’s my sembliments.”

Nevertheless, Buffalo Bill prepared to “trap the trapper,” if the latter proved to be playing a treacherous game, and to find out just what those singular messages meant.

Flynn’s adventurous blood went to the boiling point when he heard the decision.

“You’re a courageous man, Misther Cody!” he said, by way of compliment.

That was a discovery to Michael Flynn, perhaps, yet the real men of the West had known for many years that there was not on the whole Western border a man of more true and genuine courage than Buffalo Bill, the famous border scout.

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