sonal quarrels and
disturbances which he has checked among his comrades by his simple
announcement that 'This has gone far enough,'--if need be followed by the
ominous warning that when persisted in or renewed the quarreler 'must
settle it with me.'

"Wild Bill was anything but a quarrelsome man; yet no one but him could
enumerate the many conflicts in which he had been engaged, and which had
almost always resulted in the death of his adversary. I have a personal
knowledge of at least half a dozen men whom he had at various times
killed, one of these being at the time a member of my command. Others had
been severely wounded, yet he always escaped unhurt.

"On the plains every man openly carries his belt with its invariable
appendages, knife and revolver--often two of the latter. Wild Bill always
carried two handsome ivory-handled revolvers of the large size; he was
never seen without them.... Yet in all the many affairs of this kind in
which Wild Bill has performed a part, and which have come to my
knowledge, there was not a single instance in which the verdict of twelve
fair-minded men would not have been pronounced in his favor."

* * * * *

[Illustration: WILD BILL.]

Such is the faithful picture of Wild Bill as drawn by General Custer, who
was a close observer and student of personal character, and under whom
Wild Bill served as a scout.

The circumstances under which I first made his acquaintance and learned
to know him well and to appreciate his manly character and
kind-heartedness, were these. One of the teamsters in Lew. Simpson's
train was a surly, overbearing fellow, and took particular delight in
bullying and tyrannizing over me, and one day while we were at dinner he
asked me to do something for him. I did not start at once, and he gave me
a slap in the face with the back of his hand,--knocking me off an
ox-yoke on which I was sitting, and sending me sprawling on the ground.
Jumping to my feet I picked up a camp kettle full of boiling coffee which
was setting on the fire, and threw it at him. I hit him in the face, and
the hot coffee gave him a severe scalding. He sprang for me with the
ferocity of a tiger, and would undoubtedly have torn me to pieces, had it
not been for the timely interference of my new-found friend, Wild Bill,
who knocked the man down. As soon as he recovered himself, he demanded of
Wild Bill what business it was of his that he should "put in his oar."