“You can. The railroad’s running trains about 500 miles west from the river, nearly to Sheridan, and you’ve got here just in time to go along with us and see a big contest between Buffalo Bill and Billy Comstock, the chief of scouts at Fort Wallace there. They’re to hunt buffalo together for eight hours, and the one who kills the most wins a nice little purse of $500, gold. Billy Comstock is a fine young fellow, a great hunter and a crack shot――but I’ll back Buffalo Bill.” So, thought Dave, loyally, would he, too. The contest had excited great interest. An excursion for friends of the rivals and for sight-seers was to be run clear through from St. Louis. Every army officer and soldier who could leave was going from Fort Leavenworth. Leader of all was General George A. Custer, the famous “Boy General with the Golden Locks” (as during the war the newspapers had called him), who with his fighting Seventh Cavalry had arrived at Fort Leavenworth after a summer’s campaign on the plains. Of course, everybody in army circles knew about General Custer, the dashing cavalryman, with his curling yellow hair and his crimson tie. Introduced to him by General Brown, Dave blushed and stammered and felt that he must cut a very poor figure. It seemed strange that a railroad actually was on its way across the plains. In fact, there were two railroads jutting out from the Missouri River for the farther West. Northward from Omaha the celebrated Union Pacific had built clear to Julesburg, and was hustling along to Utah at the rate of five and six miles a day. It followed the old Overland Trail up the Platte, and ate the stages as it progressed. Here at the southward the Kansas Pacific, or “Eastern Division” of the Union Pacific, was reaching westward out of Leavenworth for Denver. It followed the Smoky Hill Fork Trail taken by the Hee-Haw Express――the memorable outfit of Dave’s and Billy’s and Mr. Baxter’s, and all, to the “Pike’s Peak Country” and the “Cherry Creek diggin’s.” Yes, it did seem strange to Dave to be riding that trail in a train of cars drawn by a snorting steam-engine and crowded with laughing, shouting people――travelling in an hour a distance that would have required from the Hee-Haw Express a day, perhaps! But the Hee-Haw Express had not been such a bad experience after all, and it had been fun as well as work. Gracious, how Kansas had settled! The Salt Creek Valley, people said, was all taken up by farms. The railroad route from Leavenworth down to the Kansas River at Lawrence certainly passed through nothing but farms and settlements, and on up the Kansas to the Smoky Hill Fork at Junction City all the country was farms, farms, farms, punctuated by towns and cities.