d I will protect you while in our lines."

Billy grasped the hand of the farmer, and then those of his sons, and
all thanked him warmly for the service he had done them.

But Billy was surprised to find he was within the Confederate lines, and
found by inquiring that he had taken the wrong road a few miles back.

The farmer was the captain of a neighborhood military company, and it
was his custom to come home with his sons whenever he had opportunity,
and arriving just as the fight ended he saw a man in gray uniform lying
dead in the hall, and beholding Billy in the blue, had an idea that the
Northern soldiers were on a raid, had been met by some of his men, and
he certainly would have killed the young scout but for the timely act of
his lovely daughter, Louise.

And it was this very circumstance, the meeting with Louise Frederici,
the Missouri farmer's daughter, that caused Buffalo Billy to decide to
remain in the army, and not to return to the plains, for when stationed
in or near St. Louis, he could often see the pretty dark-eyed girl who
had stolen his heart away.

Before the war ended Buffalo Billy returned to Kansas, but he carried
with him the heart of Louise Frederici, and the promise that she would
one day be his wife.

After a short visit to his sisters he again became a stage-driver, and
it was by making a desperate drive down a mountain side to escape a band
of road-agents that he won the well-deserved title of the Prince of the
Reins.

CHAPTER XXIII.

IN FETTERS.

All the time that Buffalo Bill was driving stage his thoughts were
turning to dark-eyed pretty Louise Frederici in her pleasant Missouri
home, and at last he became so love-sick that he determined to pay her a
visit and ask her to marry him at once.

He was no longer a boy in size, but a tall, elegantly-formed man, though
his years had not yet reached twenty-one.

He had saved up some money, and off to Missouri he started, and his
strangely-handsome face, superb form and comely manners were admired
wherever he went, and people wondered who he was, little dreaming they
were gazing upon a man who had been a hero since his eighth year.

He soon won Louise over to his way of thinking, by promising he would
settle down, and they were married at farmer Frederici's home and
started on their way, by a Missouri steamer, to Kansas.

Arriving at Leavenworth, Buffalo Bill and his bride received a royal
welcome from his old friends, and