Colonel Cody’s fame had reached the East long before, and a great many New Yorkers went out to see him and join in his buffalo hunts, including such men as August Belmont, James Gordon Bennett, Anson Stager, and J. G. Heckscher. In entertaining these visitors at Fort McPherson, Cody was accustomed to arrange wild-West exhibitions. In return his friends invited him to visit New York. It was upon seeing his first play in the metropolis that Cody conceived the idea of going into the show business. Assisted by Ned Buntline, novelist, and Colonel Ingraham, he started his “Wild West” show, which later developed and expanded into “A Congress of the Roughriders of the World,” first presented at Omaha, Nebraska. In time it became a familiar yearly entertainment in the great cities of this country and Europe. Many famous personages attended the performances, and became his warm friends, including Mr. Gladstone, the Marquis of Lorne, King Edward, Queen Victoria, and the Prince of Wales, now King of England. At the outbreak of the Sioux, in 1890 and 1891, Colonel Cody served at the head of the Nebraska National Guard. In 1895 Cody took up the development of Wyoming Valley by introducing irrigation. Not long afterward he became judge advocate general of the Wyoming National Guard. Colonel Cody (Buffalo Bill) died in Denver, Colorado, on January 10, 1917. His legacy to a grateful world was a large share in the development of the West, and a multitude of achievements in horsemanship, marksmanship, and endurance that will live for ages. His life will continue to be a leading example of the manliness, courage, and devotion to duty that belonged to a picturesque phase of American life now passed, like the great patriot whose career it typified, into the Great Beyond. * * * * * BUFFALO BILL, THE BORDER KING. CHAPTER I. RUNNING THE DEATH-GANTLET. Fort Advance, a structure built of heavy, squared timbers and some masonry, with towers at the four corners, commanding the deep ditches which had been dug around the walls, stood in the heart of the then untracked Territory of Utah. It was the central figure of a beautiful valley--when in repose--and commanded one of the important passes and wagon trails of the Rockies. A mountain torrent flowed through the valley, and a supply of pure water from this stream had been diverted into the armed square which, commanded by Major Frank Baldwin, was a veritable City of Refuge to all the whites who chanced to be in the country at this time. For the valley of Fort Advance offered no peaceful scene. The savage denizens of the mountain and plain had risen, and, in a raging, vengeful flood, had poured into the valley and besieged the unfortunate occupants of the fort. These were a branch of the great Sioux tribe, and, under their leading chief, Oak Heart, fought with the desperation and blind fanaticism of Berserkers.