“You’re Persimmon Pete, the gazeboo what run away with my old man.” The crowd snickered, and then roared again. “Hardly,” said Buffalo Bill. “Oh, I know ye!” was her vociferous assertion. “You come to Kansas City with an Injun medicine company, and lectured and sold medicine. And my old man went to your show and seen ye; and then he got magnetized by ye, somehow, and wandered off after you when you went away. He was dead gone on big men. I suppose that was because he was so durn little and runty himself. It made him like big men. And so he follered you off when you left town. Now, ain’t that so? I know ye. You’re Persimmon Pete.” The scout lifted his hat again, flushing slightly, for he heard the roars of the crowd. “Madam,” he said amiably, “I must deny the gentle insinuation. I never saw your husband, nor Persimmon Pete.” “You deny it?” she shrieked. “Certainly. I am compelled to doubt your word.” “And you never seen my man?” “I assure you that I never had that pleasure. What is his name?” “If you’re goin’ to start in by lyin’, it don’t make no difference what his name is!” she declared. “It might help in his identification,” he suggested. “Well, then, it’s Nicholas Nomad.” She faced toward the snickering crowd. “Now laugh!” she yelled. “It’s his name, and it fits him; fer if he ain’t about next to no man I dunno it. Think of him leavin’ me in the suds there in----” “Was ye washin’?” some one yelled. “Well, yes, I was, though how you know it I can’t guess. I was washin’ that day fer Mrs. McGinniss and her six children, and so I had to stay at home and couldn’t watch him. He took advantage of it and skun out. But I’ll git him yit, and when I do----” She shook her red fist at the crowd. “You’ll wallop him?” “Wallop him? He’ll think he’s been mixed up in a barbed-wire cyclone; I won’t leave an inch of hide on him.” She turned back to Buffalo Bill. “Ye ain’t seen him, you’re sure?” she said anxiously. “I’m sorry to say that I haven’t, madam.” “You ain’t lyin’ to me?” “No.” She gave him a fierce glare, and then turned to hurl back some words of defiance to the shouting and laughing crowd. “Don’t git too clost to me!” she warned. “I’m a lady, and I won’t stand it.” Then she moved on up the street, looking for her husband, the crowd of amused men and boys streaming after her. Buffalo Bill followed her movements with an amused smile. “Cody,” said the hotel clerk, who had come down into the street, “I’ve seen all sorts of females in my day, but she takes the cake.” Buffalo Bill laughed and turned back toward the hotel. “A bit peculiar, to say the least,” he agreed. “I don’t think I ever saw another just like her. But we’re likely to meet all kinds of queer characters out here in the West.” CHAPTER II. READY TO GO.