TRAPPED BY DEATH RIDERS. 178 XXVI. IN NICK’S CAVERN. 185 XXVII. A HARD TASK. 191 XXVIII. STORMING THE CAVERN. 195 XXIX. THE HAPPY RETURN. 204 XXX. BUFFALO BILL IN A WRECK. 208 XXXI. JOE CONGO’S DIPLOMACY. 219 XXXII. IMPRESSING SAVAGES. 231 XXXIII. A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. 241 XXXIV. ARRESTED FOR MURDER. 246 XXXV. A TALK FOR A LIFE. 253 XXXVI. BLACK PANTHER’S HAND. 261 XXXVII. RUNNING THE GANTLET. 267 XXXVIII. AT THE TORTURE STAKE. 274 XXXIX. AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR. 286 XL. TOO MUCH FIRE WATER. 295 XLI. BLACK PANTHER’S END. 304 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 role 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.”