Buffalo Bill's Boy Bugler; Or, The Last of the Indian RingIngraham, Prentiss
General
Buffalo Bill's Boy Bugler; Or, The Last of the Indian Ring
Ingraham, Prentiss
Buffalo Bill, 1846-1917 -- Fiction; Dime novels
One man at the table, a miner, had been robbed of his last cent,
despite his protest of unfairness. And then the inevitable row was
started. The victim bunglingly attempted to pull a gun, and his motion
was followed by half a dozen others who were grouped about the table.
Price was not so far intoxicated as the others, and deftly jerked a gun
to a level with the other’s breast. Somebody in the crowd accidentally
or otherwise discharged a revolver. A fusillade followed, principally
into the floor and ceiling, but when the smoke cleared the man who had
been robbed by Price was on the floor writhing with a bullet through
his body, and Price was pushing through the drunken, shouting men with
a smoking revolver in his hand. He had shot the man he had robbed and
was getting away before officers arrived.
There was no doubt regarding who had shot the miner, in the mind of
Buffalo Bill.
Buffalo Bill did not care to be held to testify in the pretended
investigation which was bound to follow, so he and his friends slipped
away. The report of the coroner would be the usual one: “Shot by an
unknown in a volley by barroom crowd.”
Outside the scout awaited for a time the action of the town’s
protectors. In half an hour the sheriff arrived, and in another half
hour the Western coroner came to take charge of the remains.
Justice certainly did not move on the “hot foot” in that city of
“courage juice” and bad men.
As the scout and his faithful negro and Indian pards were moving away
there came a terrific explosion from the direction of the hotel. A
moment later a red glare sprang up, and then hoarse shouts and screams
of anguish rent the air.
“Must be a boiler explosion,” exclaimed the scout, hastening on, “and
at or near the hotel,” he added.
His worst fears were realized. The disaster had occurred at the hotel,
but it was not a boiler explosion. The entire wing in which Buffalo
Bill and his pards had been assigned quarters had been blown up by some
powerful explosive.
No other explanation was possible than that some one had placed a heavy
explosive under the wing with malicious intent, the proprietor, who was
soon found by Buffalo Bill, declared.
Hundreds of people flocked to the scene, and among them Buffalo Bill
sought for his pard, Wild Bill Hickok, the man from Laramie, the hero
of scores of daring exploits.
The wing was wrecked and the hotel burning, but the scout still hoped
that by some miracle his partner had escaped.
The night wore away, and the fire was conquered only when the hotel was
in ashes. Two other guests of the hotel were missing, and half a dozen
had been more or less seriously injured.
Buffalo Bill haunted the scene of disaster. He could not give up hope
that Hickok had escaped. But no clue was uncovered that led to any
other conclusion than that Wild Bill had perished miserably.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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