on the
wagon-trail to Larned. Will did not suspect that he should have any
trouble in overtaking the capricious beast, but at the end of a mile
he was somewhat concerned. He had threatened and entreated, raged
and cajoled. 'Twas all wasted. The mule was as deaf to prayer as to
objurgation. It browsed contentedly along the even tenor of its way, so
near and yet so far from the young man, who, like "panting time, toil'd
after it in vain." And Larned much more than twenty miles away.

What the poet calls "the golden exhalations of the dawn" began to warm
the gray of the plain. The sun was in the roots of the grass. Four miles
away the lights of Larned twinkled. The only blot on a fair landscape
was the mule--in the middle distance. But there was a wicked gleam in
the eye of the footsore young man in the foreground.

Boom! The sunrise gun at the fort. The mule threw back its head, waved
its ears, and poured forth a song of triumph, a loud, exultant bray.

Crack! Will's rifle. Down went the mule. It had made the fatal mistake
of gloating over its villainy. Never again would it jeopardize the life
of a rider.

It had been a thirty-five-mile walk, and every bone in Will's body
ached. His shot alarmed the garrison, but he was soon on the ground with
the explanation; and after turning over his dispatches, he sought his
bed.

During the day General Hazen returned, under escort, from Fort Harker,
with dispatches for Sheridan, and Will offered to be the bearer of them.
An army mule was suggested, but he declined to again put his life in the
keeping of such an animal. A good horse was selected, and the journey
made without incident.

General Sheridan was roused at daylight to receive the scout's report
and praised Will warmly for having undertaken and safely accomplished
three such long and dangerous rides.

"In all," says General Sheridan, in his Memoirs, "Cody rode three
hundred and fifty miles in less than sixty hours, and such an exhibition
of endurance and courage was more than enough to convince me that his
services would be extremely valuable in the campaign; so I retained him
at Fort Hayes until the battalion of Fifth Cavalry arrived, and then
made him chief of scouts for that regiment."

CHAPTER XVII. -- SATANTA, CHIEF OF THE KIOWAS.

WITHIN plain view of Fort Larned lay a large camp of Kiowas and
Comanches. They were not yet bedaubed with war paint, but they were as
restless as panthers in a cage, and it wa