If the Indians were being cheated and robbed by unprincipled officers, the department wished to make an example of said officers and preserve peace and the good will of the Indians. Intruders were flocking upon the Indian lands in search of gold, and herds of the white men grazed where no human foot had the right to set, except that of the red man. The buffaloes, which were the main source of food supply for the Indians, were slain by thousands. Excursionists and others shot the animals, and their putrefying carcasses thickly dotted the plains. It was coming to the knowledge of officials in Washington that there was an “Indian ring,” which included a corrupt gang of miscreants at the national capital in league with others in the West. Through this band of rascals the Indians were provided with worthless rags for blankets and wretched meat in place of the supplies called for by treaty contract and provided by the government. By the manipulations of unscrupulous agents and land thieves the cultivated lands of the Indians were being taken from them, and tracts of deserts substituted. Buffalo Bill well knew that the whites were trampling on the rights of the red men, and his sympathies were known among both shades of skin. Sitting Bull, the famous chief, had always hated the palefaces, and, nursing the wrongs of his people, he now refused to sign a treaty giving up certain lands. He had been threatened by bumptious officials, and on the strength of these threats he had gone among the powerful Sioux tribes, and exhorted them to prepare for war. Such men as Generals Sheridan, Canby, Miles, Custer, and others foresaw serious difficulty with the Indians at a time when the general public in the East had been lulled into a sense of security in the belief that the Indian question had been settled for all time. Buffalo Bill’s mission was to soothe and quiet the Indians, so far as possible; at the same time he was bringing to justice the leaders in as corrupt a gang as ever went unhanged. He found the whites not only robbing the red men, but at war among themselves over grazing rights. Enforcement of the law was a farce, and right was much a case of might. Bad men flourished and boasted themselves terrors of the universe. These wild and woolly fellows seldom met, but exercised their blatant powers over the more submissive portion of the public. Buffalo Bill’s arrival had not been heralded, and he was not recognized at the most pretentious hostelry of the Gallatin Valley. With his pards he made up a quiet little party, who might have been attracted to town by the trial. No one seemed interested to the point of curiosity, and the scout was gratified that it was so. The men he was after might not so soon take alarm. It was a typical border aggregation that thronged the tavern that night, the air filled with tobacco smoke and fumes of liquor and vibrating with loud talk.