ully
memorized, and the mock red men were slain at an astonishing rate.

Financially the play proved all that its projectors could ask for.
Artistically--well, the critics had a great deal of fun with the hapless
dramatist. The professionals in the company had played their parts
acceptably, and, oddly enough, the scouts were let down gently in the
criticisms; but the critics had no means of knowing that the stars of
the piece had provided their own dialogue, and poor Ned Buntline was
plastered with ridicule. It had got out that the play was written
in four hours, and in mentioning this fact, one paper wondered, with
delicate sarcasm, what the dramatist had been doing all that time.
Buntline had played the part of "Gale Durg," who met death in the second
act, and a second paper, commenting on this, suggested that it would
have been a happy consummation had the death occurred before the play
was written. A third critic pronounced it a drama that might be begun
in the middle and played both ways, or played backward, quite as well as
the way in which it had been written.

However, nothing succeeds like success. A number of managers offered
to take hold of the company, and others asked for entrance to the
enterprise as partners. Ned Buntline took his medicine from the critics
with a smiling face, for "let him laugh who wins."

The scouts soon got over their stage fright, in the course of time were
able to remember their parts, and did fully their share toward making
the play as much of a success artistically as it was financially. From
Chicago the company went to St. Louis, thence to Cincinnati and other
large cities, and everywhere drew large and appreciative houses.

When the season closed, in Boston, and Will had made his preparations
to return to Nebraska, an English gentleman named Medley, presented
himself, with a request that the scout act as guide on a big hunt and
camping trip through Western territory. The pay offered was liberal--a
thousand dollars a month and expenses--and Will accepted the offer.
He spent that summer in his old occupation, and the ensuing winter
continued his tour as a star of the drama. Wild Bill and Texas Jack
consented again to "support" him, but the second season proved too much
for the patience of the former, and he attempted to break through the
contract he had signed for the season. The manager, of course, refused
to release him, but Wild Bill conceived the notion that under certain
c