The Professor took occasion, before parting with Wild William, to administer some excellent advice, urging him especially, if he wished to die in his bed, to abandon the pistol and seize upon the plow-share. His reputation as Union scout, guide for the Indian country, and sheriff of frontier towns, our leader said, was a sufficient competency of fame to justify his retirement upon it. In this opinion the public will certainly coincide. Buffalo Bill was to be our guide. He informed us that Wild Bill was his cousin. Cody is spare and wiry in figure, admirably versed in plain lore, and altogether the best guide I ever saw. The mysterious plain is a book that he knows by heart. He crossed it twice as teamster, while a mere boy, and has spent the greater part of his life on it since. He led us over its surface on starless nights, when the shadow of the blackness above hid our horses and the earth, and though many a time with no trail to follow and on the very mid-ocean of the expanse, he never made a failure. Buffalo Bill has since figured in one of Buntline's Indian romances. We award him the credit of being a good scout and most excellent guide; but the fact that he can slaughter buffalo is by no means remarkable, since the American bison is dangerous game only to amateurs. We were off early on Tuesday morning for the Saline, our course toward which lay before us a little west of north, the citizens turning out to see us start. We had just parted from Gripe, who went East on the first train to get his ribs healed. "To think, gentlemen," said he, "that I should have escaped rebel bullets and Indian atrocities, only to have my ribs cracked at last by a stampede of mules!" Poor Gripe's farewell reminded me strongly of the old saying about the ruling passion strong in death. As he stood on the platform, with one hand against his aching side, he could not refrain from waving a courtly adieu with the other, and bowing himself from our presence, into the car, as if leaving the stage after a political speech. We were sorry to lose our friend, and this, together with the thought of the weeks of uncertainties and anxieties which lay before us, made our exit from Hays rather a solemn affair. Even Tammany Sachem's face was ironed out so completely that not a smile wrinkled it. Dobeen had loaded one wagon with culinary weapons, and now sat among his pots and pans, evidently ill at ease and wishing himself doing any thing else rather than about to plunge further into the wilderness. When about to mount Cynocephalus, Semi's feelings were wounded by a depraved urchin who suggested, "You'd better fust knock that fly off, Boss. Both on ye 'll be too much for the hoss!" Fortunately, perhaps, for our feelings, the remainder of the inhabitants were so civil that further criticisms on our outfit, though they may have been ripe at their tongues' end, were carefully repressed.