Читать книгу Buffalo Bill, Peacemaker; Or, On a Troublesome Trail онлайн

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Buffalo Bill dropped into his corner of the complication on the wide grazing grounds, en route to the town of Hackamore, where he was to join Wild Bill, old Nomad, the trapper, who had shared many dangers with the scout, Baron von Schuitzenhauser, his Dutch pard, and Little Cayuse, his Indian trailer. And when it is said that he “dropped” into the complication, the statement is to be taken literally.

It was a night, a night made brilliant by moon and stars. The scout was two days from Portales, New Mexico, having diverged from the trail taken by his pards in order to halt for half a day in the town of Texico.

Buffalo Bill was off the trail, a plainsman having shown him a short cut that was to save many miles of saddle work. As Bear Paw forged ahead at a slow, steady gallop, the scout rocked gently in his saddle, half dozing.

He did not see the stovepipe that rose out of the ground in front of him, nor did he see the little ridgelike lifting of the earth adjacent to the stovepipe.

Bear Paw saw the pipe, however, and to evade it attempted to cross the small elevation. Intelligent horse though he was, how was he to know that elevation was not solid earth?