“I’m Pizen Kate, from Kansas City!” she yelled. “Git out of my way, er I’ll jab yer eye out with my umbreller. I’m lookin’ fer my husband, and you ain’t him. Think I’d take up with a weasel-faced, bow-legged speciment like you? Not on your tintype. I wouldn’t! So, git out o’ my way!” The man had tried to “chaff” her and had roused her ire, but he fell back before the angry jabs of her “umbreller.” She looked about, glaring. She was “homely as sin.” Her features were not only irregular; they were twisted, gnarled, and seamed. A few thin hairs of an attempted beard floated from a mole on her chin, and on her upper lip there was a faint trace of a mustache. She was dressed in a soiled cotton garment, and on her head was a shapeless hat, with a faded red rose for ornament. In her muscular right hand she flourished an ancient umbrella. “I heard my husband had come here, and I’m lookin’ fer him,” she declared. “He run away from me in Kansas City, and I set out to foller him; and I’ll foller him to the end o’ the earth but that I git him.” “I’m bettin’ on you, all right!” called out some irreverent individual. She fixed him with a glassy stare. “Was I ’specially directin’ my langwidge to you?” she demanded. “I hate to hear a horse bray out that way. It’s sickenin’.” “And I hate to hear the blather of a nanny goat!” She lifted her umbrella. “Say that ag’in, you red-headed son of a scarecrow, and I’ll ram this umbreller down yer neck and open it up inside of ye! I’d have you know that I’m a lady, and don’t allow no back talk.” “What kind o’ lookin’ feller is your husband?” another asked. “Well, he’s better-lookin’ than them that slanders him, if he is little and runty! He’s a small man, slim as a blacksnake, and wiry as a watch spring, and he’s a bit oldish. He was in this town less’n a week ago.” “Kate, I reckon we ain’t met up with him.” “Wot’s his name?” said another. “What’s that got to do with it, if ye ain’t seen him?” she demanded. She fixed her eyes on a man who had, a moment before, descended the steps of the Golconda Hotel, and who came now toward the crowd that hedged her in. The man was Buffalo Bill; handsome, muscular, dressed in his border costume, and towering a full head over the other men in the street. “That’s him, I reckon, Katie--there comes yer husband, I’m bettin’. You said he was little and runty, slim as a blacksnake, and wiry as a watch spring. I guess you hit his trail here, all right.” It was the sort of humor this crowd could understand, and they roared hilariously. Pizen Kate ignored them with fine scorn, and moved toward the great scout, the men falling back before her jabbing umbrella and giving her ample room. She pranced thus up in front of Buffalo Bill, and stood eying him, umbrella in one hand and the other hand on her hip. “I think I seen you onct,” she announced, as the scout politely lifted his big hat to her. “Possibly,” he said, smiling.