This was said by Billy's best pard and the others who liked the boy backed him up in his words, and pistols were drawn on both sides and the slightest act now all knew would cause trouble. "If they'll fight me with revolvers and separately I'll be willing," said Billy, hastily, anxious to avert the trouble. "Waal, we'll do that, so sail in," said one. "No, not this way, you accursed coward, but go off there, stand with your back to the boy, as he will to you, and twenty paces apart, and at a word wheel and fire," cried Billy's friend. This seemed fair and all agreed to it, and the man and the boy were placed in position, Billy pale but calm. The other side won the word to wheel and fire, and though the man tried to aid his friend in giving it, Buffalo Billy was too quick for him and fired a second in advance of his adversary. But that second was enough, for the bullet went straight to the heart of the one at which it was aimed, while his shot flew wild. A yell burst from Billy's friends as they rushed forward while his foes were bringing up their other man. But just then a stranger rode up, and leveling a pistol at the second claimant for the mine said sternly: "Dick Malone, my gallows-bird, I arrest you in the name of the law." The stranger was a United States detective, and the one he arrested an escaped convict. This ended the fight for the mine; but after a few days' longer work in it Billy found that the vein panned out badly, and selling out his interest in it returned to his home once more, convinced that mining was not his forte, though he certainly had dug out enough of the yellow ore to prove to his mother that he had not been idle. CHAPTER XIV. THE YOUNG GUIDE. The next time that Buffalo Billy left home it was in the capacity of assistant guide to a train of emigrants that were going to the far West to settle. In Leavenworth one night he met in a common assembling room for all classes of men, a man who was Train Boss, or captain, and who was going to the West to raise cattle and also to farm. His train, consisting of some thirty families, was encamped out of town resting and fitting up for the renewal of the march, and he had come into Leavenworth to secure a competent guide, the one who had been acting as such having been taken very ill. He had just secured the services of a young man who professed to know the country well though he was a stranger in Leavenworth, and fearing an accident might deprive him of his services too, the captain was looking around for an assistant when he came upon Billy. He liked the boy from the first, but feared, on account of his youth, that he might not be competent for the position, until assured by several teamsters that he was fully so, and consequently he engaged Billy at a fair salary. The chief guide, who called himself Roy Velvet, Billy had never met, until the morning the train rolled out of camp on its way westward, and from the very first he did not like him.