e, but the cattle had either been driven away or had joined
one of the numerous herds of buffalo; the wagons and their freight had
been burned, and there was nothing to do but bury the three pickets,
whose scalped and mutilated bodies were stretched where they had fallen.

Then the troops and trainmen parted company, the former to undertake
a bootless quest for the red marauders, the latter to return to
Leavenworth, their occupation gone. The government held itself
responsible for the depredations of its wards, and the loss of the
wagons and cattle was assumed at Washington.

CHAPTER VI. -- FAMILY DEFENDER AND HOUSEHOLD TEASE.

THE fame to which Byron woke one historic morning was no more unexpected
to him than that which now greeted Will. The trainmen had not been
over-modest in their accounts of his pluck; and when a newspaper
reporter lent the magic of his imagination to the plain narrative, it
became quite a story, headed in display type, "The Boy Indian Slayer."

But Will was speedily concerned with other than his own affairs, for as
soon as his position with the freighters was assured, mother engaged a
lawyer to fight the claim against our estate. This legal light was
John C. Douglass, then unknown, unhonored, and unsung, but talented and
enterprising notwithstanding. He had just settled in Leavenworth, and he
could scarcely have found a better case with which to storm the heights
of fame--the dead father, the sick mother, the helpless children, and
relentless persecution, in one scale; in the other, an eleven-year-old
boy doing a man's work to earn the money needed to combat the family's
enemies. Douglass put his whole strength into the case.

He knew as well as we that our cause was weak; it hung by a single
thread--a missing witness, Mr. Barnhart. This man had acted as
bookkeeper when the bills were paid, but he had been sent away, and
the prosecution--or persecution--had thus far succeeded in keeping his
where-abouts a secret. To every place where he was likely to be Lawyer
Douglass had written; but we were as much in the dark as ever when the
morning for the trial of the suit arrived.

The case had excited much interest, and the court-room was crowded, many
persons having been drawn thither by a curiosity to look upon "The Boy
Indian Slayer." There was a cheerful unanimity of opinion upon the utter
hopelessness of the Cody side of the case. Not only were prominent and
wealthy men arrayed against us,