ed with his family shortly after
the incident which I will now relate.

The circumstance to which I refer, and that made a boy hero of him in
the eyes of the neighbors for miles around where his parents lived,
showed the wonderful nerve that has never since deserted him, but rather
has increased with his years.

The country school which he attended was some five miles from his
father's house and he was wont to ride there each morning and back in
the afternoon upon a wiry, vicious little mustang that every one had
prognosticated would some day be the death of him.

Living a few miles from the Cody ranch was a poor settler who had a son
two years Billy's senior, who also attended the same school, but whose
parents were too poor to spare him a horse from the farm to ride.

This boy was Billy's chum, and as they shared together their noonday
meal, the pony was also shared, for the boy rode behind my hero to and
from school, being called for each morning and dropped off near his
cabin on the return trip.

Owing to the lawlessness of the country Mr. Cody allowed his son to go
armed, knowing that he fully understood the use of weapons, and his
pistol Billy always hung up with his hat upon reaching the log cabin,
where, figuratively speaking, the young idea was taught to shoot.

The weapon was a revolver, a Colt's, which at that time was not in
common use, and Billy prized it above his books and pony even and always
kept it in perfect order.

One day Rascal, his pony, pulled up the lariat pin which held him out
upon the prairie and scampered for home, and Billy and Davie Dunn, his
chum, were forced to "hoof it," as the western slang goes, home.

A storm was coming on, and to escape it the boys turned off the main
trail and took refuge in a log cabin which was said to be haunted by the
ghosts of its former occupants; at least they had been all mysteriously
murdered there one night and were buried in the shadow of the cabin, and
people gave the place a wide berth.

It was situated back in a piece of heavy timber and looked dismal
enough, but Billy proposed that they should go there, more out of sheer
bravado to show he was not afraid than to escape a ducking, for which he
and Davie Dunn really little cared.

The boys reached the cabin, climbed in an open window and stood looking
out at the approaching storm.

"Kansas crickets! but look there, Davie!"

The words came from Buffalo Billy and he was pointing out toward