



Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net






Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer

OR,

THE STRANGER IN CAMP

By Colonel Prentiss Ingraham

Author of the celebrated "Buffalo Bill" stories published in the BORDER
STORIES. For other titles see catalogue.

[Illustration]

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright, 1908
By STREET & SMITH
Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.




IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F. CODY

(BUFFALO BILL).


It is now some generations since Josh Billings, Ned Buntline, and
Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, intimate friends of Colonel William F. Cody,
used to forgather in the office of Francis S. Smith, then proprietor of
the _New York Weekly_. It was a dingy little office on Rose Street, New
York, but the breath of the great outdoors stirred there when these
old-timers got together. As a result of these conversations, Colonel
Ingraham and Ned Buntline began to write of the adventures of Buffalo
Bill for Street & Smith.

Colonel Cody was born in Scott County, Iowa, February 26, 1846. Before
he had reached his teens, his father, Isaac Cody, with his mother and
two sisters, migrated to Kansas, which at that time was little more than
a wilderness.

When the elder Cody was killed shortly afterward in the Kansas "Border
War," young Bill assumed the difficult role of family breadwinner.
During 1860, and until the outbreak of the Civil War, Cody lived the
arduous life of a pony-express rider. Cody volunteered his services as
government scout and guide and served throughout the Civil War with
Generals McNeil and A. J. Smith. He was a distinguished member of the
Seventh Kansas Cavalry.

During the Civil War, while riding through the streets of St. Louis,
Cody rescued a frightened schoolgirl from a band of annoyers. In true
romantic style, Cody and Louisa Federci, the girl, were married March 6,
1866.

In 1867 Cody was employed to furnish a specified amount of buffalo meat
to the construction men at work on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It was
in this period that he received the sobriquet "Buffalo Bill."

In 1868 and for four years thereafter Colonel Cody served as scout and
guide in campaigns against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. It was
General Sheridan who conferred on Cody the honor of chief of scouts of
the command.

After completing a period of service in the Nebraska legislature, Cody
joined the Fifth Cavalry in 1876, and was again appointed chief of
scouts.

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 Rough-riders 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.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.        THE HERMIT OF THE GRAND CANYON           5
II.       THE MINER'S SECRET                      14
III.