"stuck," and a happy thought
occurred to him. He said--as if it were in the play:

"Where have you been, Bill? What has kept you so long?"

Just then my eye happened to fall on Mr. Milligan, who was surrounded by
his friends, the newspaper reporters, and several military officers, all
of whom had heard of his hunt and "Indian fight"--he being a very popular
man, and widely known in Chicago. So I said:

"I have been out on a hunt with Milligan."

This proved to be a big hit. The audience cheered and applauded; which
gave me greater confidence in my ability to get through the performance
all right. Buntline, who is a very versatile man, saw that it would be a
good plan to follow this up, and he said:

"Well, Bill, tell us all about the hunt."

I thereupon proceeded to relate in detail the particulars of the affair.
I succeeded in making it rather funny, and I was frequently interrupted
by rounds of applause. Whenever I began to "weaken," Buntline would give
me a fresh start, by asking some question. In this way I took up fifteen
minutes, without once speaking a word of my part; nor did I speak a word
of it during the whole evening. The prompter, who was standing between
the wings, attempted to prompt me, but it did no good; for while I was on
the stage I "chipped in" anything I thought of.

"The Scouts of the Plains" was an Indian drama, of course; and there were
between forty and fifty "supers" dressed as Indians. In the fight with
them, Jack and I were at home. We blazed away at each other with blank
cartridges; and when the scene ended in a hand-to-hand encounter--a
general knock-down and drag-out--the way Jack and I killed Indians was "a
caution." We would kill them all off in one act, but they would come up
again ready for business in the next. Finally the curtain dropped; the
play was ended; and I congratulated Jack and myself on having made such a
brilliant and-successful _debut_. There was no backing out after that.

The next morning there appeared in the Chicago papers some very funny
criticisms on our first performance. The papers gave us a better send-off
than I expected, for they did not criticise us as actors. The _Chicago
Times_ said that if Buntline had actually spent four hours in writing
that play, it was difficult for any one to see what he had been doing all
the time. Buntline, as "Cale Durg," was killed in the second act, after a
long temperance speech; and the _Inter-Ocean_ said that it was to