Buffalo Bill's Bold Play; Or, The Tiger of the HillsIngraham, Prentiss
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Buffalo Bill's Bold Play; Or, The Tiger of the Hills
Ingraham, Prentiss
Buffalo Bill, 1846-1917 -- Fiction; Dime novels
“He’s in that little den he uses, back of the saloon,” she was
informed. “You’d better see him.”
Vera Bright shivered, in spite of herself; she recalled the fact that
some one, possibly White-eyed Moses, had eavesdropped at the door of
Buffalo Bill’s room at the Eagle House.
“He isn’t in a temper?” she said anxiously.
“I don’t think so; he seemed in good enough humor. But the way he
said it when he told me to tell you made me know that he meant it. So
I’d advise you to go.”
For a moment Vera Bright thought of bolting out of the place and
giving up the task she had assumed. Then her native courage came to
reassure her.
“He may talk rough,” she thought; “but so long as the waiter knows
that he sent for me he won’t do anything more than that. And if I’m
to stay here and play spy I must expect to meet him.”
So she girded up her courage and went to the room which Gopher Gabe
used at times, where he would sit giving his orders.
His round, fat, flushed face showed only the utmost kindness as she
came into the room after pausing timidly on the threshold. The hour
was late--the performance had lasted a long time. She wondered if she
was not doing a foolish thing.
“So you came!” he said. “I thought you would.”
He got up, gave her a chair, then closed the door; but she observed
that he did not lock it.
“Good show to-night, they tell me,” he observed as he came back, “and
a good audience. I suppose the manager raised your pay. He ought to.”
She felt afraid of him; he was so large and strong, such a very giant
of a man--his jaws were heavy, his neck thick, his shoulders big
and broad. He was a huge, coarse leviathan, and she felt that if he
wished he could crush her between his fat, thick fingers. Again the
feeling came on her strongly that in mixing in this matter she was
putting her life in danger.
There was a slight trembling of her voice when she asked him why he
had sent for her.
“Well,” he said, leaning back in his big chair and looking steadily
at her, “I understand that you have gone over to my enemies; I wanted
to ask you if it was true.”
“Not in the sense you perhaps think,” she assured him, knowing now
that White-eyed Moses had heard and told, and that she could not
deceive the man before her as to what had passed at the Eagle House.
“In what sense, then?” he asked.
“I have nothing against _you_,” she told him.
“Against some of my friends, eh?”
“Not unless you call Juniper Joe and Tim Benson your friends,”
she declared. “I don’t need to explain about that matter, as you
understand it.”
“You’ve got it in fer them because you think they killed Ward, and
you was sweet on Ward! That’s it, eh?”
She clinched her hands tightly together in her lap.
“Something like that,” she admitted.
“Well, what is it you’re goin’ to do?” he asked.
“If I can find out where they are I’m going to notify the sheriff.”
“And Buffalo Bill?”
“Yes, I shall tell him, too.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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