man.

But just then a stranger rode up, and leveling a pistol at the second
claimant for the mine said sternly:

"Dick Malone, my gallows-bird, I arrest you in the name of the law."

The stranger was a United States detective, and the one he arrested an
escaped convict.

This ended the fight for the mine; but after a few days' longer work
in it Billy found that the vein panned out badly, and selling out his
interest in it returned to his home once more, convinced that mining was
not his forte, though he certainly had dug out enough of the yellow ore
to prove to his mother that he had not been idle.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE YOUNG GUIDE.

The next time that Buffalo Billy left home it was in the capacity of
assistant guide to a train of emigrants that were going to the far West
to settle.

In Leavenworth one night he met in a common assembling room for all
classes of men, a man who was Train Boss, or captain, and who was going
to the West to raise cattle and also to farm.

His train, consisting of some thirty families, was encamped out of town
resting and fitting up for the renewal of the march, and he had come
into Leavenworth to secure a competent guide, the one who had been
acting as such having been taken very ill.

He had just secured the services of a young man who professed to know
the country well though he was a stranger in Leavenworth, and fearing an
accident might deprive him of his services too, the captain was looking
around for an assistant when he came upon Billy.

He liked the boy from the first, but feared, on account of his youth,
that he might not be competent for the position, until assured by
several teamsters that he was fully so, and consequently he engaged
Billy at a fair salary.

The chief guide, who called himself Roy Velvet, Billy had never met,
until the morning the train rolled out of camp on its way westward, and
from the very first he did not like him.

He was a handsome, but dissipated looking young man, dressed like a
dandy, was more than thoroughly armed, and rode a superb bay mare.

He smiled when Captain Luke Denham, the Train Boss, introduced Billy as
an assistant guide, and said sneeringly:

"I guess he won't be of much use ten miles away from Leavenworth,
captain."

Billy made no reply, but kept up considerable thinking, and set to work
at his duties.

For some days the train went on finely, and all felt the new guide knew
his business; but then there came som