pioneers to that part of the West, Buffalo Bill, or Will Cody, was
inured to scenes of hardship and danger ere he reached his tenth year,
and being a precocious youth, his adventurous spirit led him into all
sorts of deeds of mischief and daring, which well served to lay the
foundation for the later acts of his life.




CHAPTER II.

A CAPTURE OF OUTLAWS.


When Will was but nine years of age his first thrilling adventure
occurred, and it gave the boy a name for pluck and nerve that went with
him to Kansas, where his father removed with his family shortly after
the incident which I will now relate.

The circumstance to which I refer, and that made a boy hero of him in
the eyes of the neighbors for miles around where his parents lived,
showed the wonderful nerve that has never since deserted him, but rather
has increased with his years.

The country school which he attended was some five miles from his
father's house and he was wont to ride there each morning and back in
the afternoon upon a wiry, vicious little mustang that every one had
prognosticated would some day be the death of him.

Living a few miles from the Cody ranch was a poor settler who had a son