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WOMEN AND MEDIEVAL EPIC
GENDER, GENRE, AND THE LIMITS OF
EPIC MASCULINITY

Edited by
Sara S. Poor and ]ana K. Schulman
 WOMEN AND MEDIEVAL EPIC

*
© Sara S. Poor and jan a K. Schulman, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-6602-5
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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ISBN 978-1-349-73309-5 ISBN 978-1-137-06637-4 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-06637-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Women and medieval epic: gender, genre, and the limits of epic
masculinity I edited by Sara S. Poor and jana K. Schulman.
p. cm.-(The New Middle Ages)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Poetry, Medieval-History and criticism. 2. Epic poetry,
European-History and criticism. 3. Women in literature.
4. Masculinity in literature. I. Poor, Sara S. 1963-11. Schulman, jana K.
1959-111. Series.
PN690.W66W66 2007
809.1 '3209940902-dc22 2006045413
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: january 2007
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Transferred to digital printing in 2007.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments lX

Notes on Contributors Xl

Introduction 1
Sara S. Poor and ]ana K. Schulman
1 Winning Women in Two Middle English Alexander Poems 15
Christine Chism
2 Surprisingly Historical Women in the Old French
Cmsade Cycle 41
Sarah-Grace Heller
3 Women in the Shalmameh: Exotics and Natives, Rebellious
Legends, and Dutiful Histories 67
Dick Davis
4 Women Characters and the Limits of Patriarchy
in the Poema De Mio Cid and Mocedades de Rodrigo 91
Thomas Caldin
5 What Hrotsvit Did to Virgil: Expanding the Boundaries of
the Classical Epic in Tenth-Century Ottonian Saxony 115
Kate Olson
6 All About Eve: Memory and Re-Collection in Junius 11 's
Epic Poems Genesis and Christ and Satan 137
Lisabeth C. Buchelt
7 Ethical Acts and Annihilation: Feminine Heroics
in Girart de Roussillon 159
William Burgwinkle
8 Caught between Worlds: Gendering the Maiden Warrior
in Old Norse 183
William Layher
V111 CONTENTS

9 "A Guest is in the Hall": Women, Feasts, and Violence in

Icelandic Epic 209
]ana K. Schulman
10 Monstrous Mates: The Leading Ladies of the Nibelungcnlied
and Viilsun.s<a sa.s<a 235
Kaarcn Grimstad ami Ray M. Wakiftcld
11 Perfonnative Emotion and the Politics of Gender in the
NibclunJ<enlicd 253
Kathryn Starkey

Biblio.s<raphy 273

Index 293
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As is usual with a project such as this, we owe thanks to a number of people

for their help in putting this volume together. The idea for the volume
arose from a set of panels we organized at Kalamazoo in 2002 and we are
grateful to those panel participants for inspiring us to go forward with the
book project. We also want to acknowledge all our contributors for their
excellent essays from which we both learned a great deal and especially for
their patience and diligence in responding to our various queries during the
editing process. A special thanks goes to Christine Chism and Lisabeth C.
Buchelt for submitting chapters on short notice. We owe further debts of
gratitude to the anonymous reader, whose feedback improved the volume
in important ways; to William Layher and Kathleen Davis for sharing their
expertise in their respective fields (Gernun and Old English) as we assem-
bled a core bibliography for the theory of epic; to Claire M. Waters for her
helpful comments on the introduction; and to Donna and Gene Best, the
proprietors of the Red Brick Inn in Nicklesville, Pennsylvania for the
lovely and hospitable surroundings where we met to put the final manu-
script together. Finally, we thank Bonnie Wheeler and the editing staff at
Palgrave for their support of and work on the project throughout.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Lisabeth C. Buchelt received her PhD in English from Boston College

in May 2005, and is Assistant Professor of Medieval Literature in the
English Department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She was a
Fulbright Fellow in Ireland in 2002-2003, and her expertise lies in com-
parative analyses of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, Welsh, and Irish
medieval literature and culture. She has also published on nineteenth- and
twentieth-century visual arts in Ireland.

William Burgwinkle is a specialist in French and Occitan and on the

Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty at King's College, University of
Cambridge. He is the author of Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval
Literature, 105(}-1230 (CUP, 2004), Love for Sale: Materialist Readings of the
Troubadour Ra.zo Corpus (Garland, 1997), and Ra.zos and Troubadour Songs
(Garland, 1990). He is also the co-editor of SiJ<nfficant Others: Gender and
Culture in Film and Literature, East and West (Hawaii, 1992). He is currently
working on the notion of embodiment in hagiography and pornography,
modern and medieval.

Thomas Caldin received a PhD in medieval Castilian epic literature from

Clare College, Cambridge, UK, in July 2003. He now works as a transla-
tor and interpreter in Brussels, Belgium.

Christine Chism teaches in the English Department at Rutgers

University. Her book, Alliterative Revivals, was published by University
of Pennsylvania Press in 2002. She is currently interested in the politics
of friendship in late medieval English literature, and in medieval travel
narratives.

Dick Davis is Chair and Professor of Persian in the Department of Near

Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University. He has produced
over twenty books, including scholarly works, edited volumes, poetry, and
translations from Italian and Persian. He has written extensively on
Ferdowsi's Shalmameh, and his translation of the complete poem has just
been published as a Penguin Classic (2006).
xn NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Kaaren Grimstad is Associate Professor in the Department of Gernun,

Scandinavian, and Dutch at the University of Minnesota. Her teaching and
research include Old Norse language, literature, and culture. Recently she
has published a bilingual, diplomatic edition, Vglsun.s<a sa.s<a: The SaJ<a i?f the
Volsungs (2000).
Sarah-Grace Heller is Assistant Professor in the Department of French
and Italian at the Ohio State University. She has published articles on fash-
ion, sumptuary law, and the crusades in Old French literature in Speculum,
Medievalia et Humanistica, French Historical Studies, and several edited volumes.
William Layher is Assistant Professor of medieval Gennan and medieval
Scandinavian literature and culture in the Department of Gennanic
Languages and Literatures at Washington University in StLouis.

Kate Olson is a candidate for the PhD in the Department of English and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is currently working
on a dissertation concerning the representation of violence and the femi-
nine in medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature.

Sara S. Poor is Associate Professor of Gernun at Princeton University.

Her research interests include medieval mysticism, gender studies,
medieval Gennan epic and romance, and manuscript studies. She is the
author of Mechthild i?f Ma.s<debw;s< and Her Book: Gender and the Makin.s< i?f
Textual Authority (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
Jana K. Schulman is an associate professor in the English Department at
Western Michigan University where she teaches Old English and Old
Norse. Schulman is the editor of The Rise of the Medieval World, 50{}-1300,
a biographical dictionary published in 2002; her translation and edition of
a thirteenth-century Icelandic law code, The Laws of Later Iceland: ]i!nsMk,
is forthcoming in the series Bibliotheca Germanica.

Kathryn Starkey is Associate Professor in the Department of Gennanic

Languages at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the
author of Reading the Medieval Book: Word, Image, and Peiformance in Wolfram
von Eschenbach's Willehalm (Notre Dame 2004) and co-editor of Visual
Culture and the German Middle Ages (Palgrave 2005).
Ray M. Wakefield is Associate Professor of German and Dutch at the
University of Minnesota. His research areas include prosody in medieval
Germanic, Beguine mysticism, and second language acquisition. He is also
active administratively, currently as Director of Undergraduate Studies and
as Director of the European Studies Consortium.
INTRODUCTION

Sara S. Poor and ]ana K. Schulman

T his collection of essays explores the place, function, and meaning of

women as characters, authors, constn1cts, and cultural sytnbols in a vari-
ety of epic literatures from the Middle Ages. These include: Hrotsvit of
Gandersheim's Latin epics celebrating Otto I and the foundation of
Gandersheim Abbey; the Middle English Alexander romances which follow
in the tradition of the Old French chanson de .s<estes; the Old English Genesis;
three central texts from the Old French Cmsade Cycle; Cirart de Roussillon,
an Occitan chanson de .s<este; the Shalmameh, a Persian epic; the Mocedades de
Rodrigo, a Spanish epic in the Cid cycle; the Middle High Gem1an NibelunJ<enlied;
the Norse Viilsunga SaJ<a; and the Icelandic family sagas. Such a diverse group of
texts gathered under the mbric of "epic" raises the question ofhow epic should
be defined. Epic is traditionally understood as a verse narrative about a male
hero and his heroic deeds ofhonor. 1 Typically, the subject matter makes refer-
ence to a conmmnal past or tradition: the hero's deeds often have a foundational
quality-they establish a dynasty, a lasting order, or, in some cases, mark the
downfall of same. Classical epics are generally written in particular languages
(Greek or Latin) and have particular fonns Oeonine or alexandrine hexan1eter).
There has been a long tradition of considering epic poetry as exhibiting some
degree of orality. That is, the narratives display evidence, such as the use offor-
mulaic epithets or references to a listening audience, that they were at some
point composed during or as part of an oral recitation or perfonnance. 2 Finally,
the world of epic is a martial world, a community of warriors defined by its dis-
tance from a world of women and promoting an ideology of masculinity that
shores up the heroes' relationship to power and authority. 3
Epic, like many literary genres, is also well supplied with sub-categories.
Archaic epic, for example, is said to focus on the individual hero, who, aware
of his own mortality, chooses to meet his fate. The focus on the individual
and his experiences against the backdrop of his cmmnunity, but also outside
of it, make poems such as the Iliad and the Odyssey examples of archaic epic.
2 SARA POOR AND JANA SCHULMAN

Imperial or dynastic epic such as the Aeneid recognizes the importance of the
cmmnunity or group above the individual. Imperial epic, often called
"secondary epic," is "a conscious modification of the archaic type," with a
hero who must put aside personal ambition to focus on his community. 4
Religious epics expand the concept of epic still further; they concern them-
selves not with the fate of one or several cmmnunities, but rather with the
fate of all humanity, and "persuade us to follow Christian principles in our
lifetime, since our efforts will be requited in the afterlife."-"
The epics discussed in the following essays fit variously into these para-
meters, but they also extend them. While Hrotsvit's works are written in a
classical language (Latin), they refer to the classical model for imperial epic
in the Middle Ages (Virgil's Aeneid) only insofar as they reconfigure it. The
rest of the texts considered come down to us in vernaculars and exhibit a
variety of poetic fonns. The Middle English Alexander narratives consid-
ered by Christine Chism take on an archaic epic subject matter (the deeds of
the heroic Alexander) and invoke the epic style of the Old French chansons
de .s<este, but are considered part of the English tradition of medieval
romance. The Old English Genesis discussed by Lisabeth C. Buchelt uses
imperial epic conventions to recast aspects of the Christian foundational
narrative. The Old French Crusade Cycle examined in Sarah-Grace Heller's
essay narrates the contemporary events of the attempted conquest of the
Middle East in an epic fonn and style that shares a penneable border with
contemporary chronicles. The Occitan Cirart de Roussillon analyzed by
William Burgwinkle is an epic narrative about a conflict between the king
of France and one of his barons that turns religious and merges with hagiog-
raphy in its conclusion. The Persian epic called the Shahnameh, considered
here by Dick Davis makes claim, in narrating the deeds of past heroes, to
both legendary and chronicle status as well. The medieval Spanish Cid epics
discussed by Thomas Caldin also contain elements that recall hagiography
and romance. The Nibclungenlicd-discussed in the chapters by Kathryn
Starkey, and by Ray Wakefield and Kaaren Grimstad-though long consid-
ered a traditional epic in German scholarship, has also been described as a
"genre experiment."(; The sagas analyzed in the essays by ]ana K. Schulman
and William Layher are foundational stories of heroic deeds (of kings, or
women dressed as kings), but they are written in prose rather than the tra-
ditional and almost defining epic forn1 of verse.
What unifies all these works, as Georg Lukacs has suggested, is the funda-
mental place of "community," whether the works tell the tales of the estab-
lishment of particular communities, the foundation from which communities
contemporary with the singer or author draw cultural meaning, or the end of
a foundational community. 7 And while all of the texts considered except for
Hrotsvit's Primorida focus primarily on the deeds of men, the communities in
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 Buffalo Bill’s Boy Bugler
OR,

THE LAST OF THE INDIAN RING

BY
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Author of the celebrated “Buffalo Bill” stories published in

the
Border Stories. For other titles see catalogue.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION

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 Copyright, 1909
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 IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F.
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(BUFFALO BILL).

It is now some generations since Josh Billings, Ned Buntline, and

Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, intimate friends of Colonel William F.
Cody, used to forgather in the office of Francis S. Smith, then
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there when these old-timers got together. As a result of these
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the adventures of Buffalo Bill for Street & Smith.
Colonel Cody was born in Scott County, Iowa, February 26, 1846.
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“Border War,” young Bill assumed the difficult rôle of family
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true romantic style, Cody and Louisa Federci, the girl, were married
March 6, 1866.
In 1867 Cody was employed to furnish a specified amount of buffalo
meat to the construction men at work on the Kansas Pacific Railroad.
It was in this period that he received the sobriquet “Buffalo Bill.”
In 1868 and for four years thereafter Colonel Cody served as scout
and guide in campaigns against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. It
was General Sheridan who conferred on Cody the honor of chief of
scouts of the command.
After completing a period of service in the Nebraska legislature,
Cody joined the Fifth Cavalry in 1876, and was again appointed chief
of scouts.
Colonel Cody’s fame had reached the East long before, and a great
many New Yorkers went out to see him and join in his buffalo hunts,
including such men as August Belmont, James Gordon Bennett,
Anson Stager, and J. G. Heckscher. In entertaining these visitors at
Fort McPherson, Cody was accustomed to arrange wild-West
exhibitions. In return his friends invited him to visit New York. It was
upon seeing his first play in the metropolis that Cody conceived the
idea of going into the show business.
Assisted by Ned Buntline, novelist, and Colonel Ingraham, he started
his “Wild West” show, which later developed and expanded into “A
Congress of the Rough-riders of the World,” first presented at
Omaha, Nebraska. In time it became a familiar yearly entertainment
in the great cities of this country and Europe. Many famous
personages attended the performances, and became his warm
friends, including Mr. Gladstone, the Marquis of Lorne, King Edward,
Queen Victoria, and the Prince of Wales, now King of England.
At the outbreak of the Sioux, in 1890 and 1891, Colonel Cody served
at the head of the Nebraska National Guard. In 1895 Cody took up
the development of Wyoming Valley by introducing irrigation. Not
long afterward he became judge advocate general of the Wyoming
National Guard.
Colonel Cody (Buffalo Bill) died in Denver, Colorado, on January 10,
1917. His legacy to a grateful world was a large share in the
development of the West, and a multitude of achievements in
horsemanship, marksmanship, and endurance that will live for ages.
His life will continue to be a leading example of the manliness,
courage, and devotion to duty that belonged to a picturesque phase
of American life now passed, like the great patriot whose career it
typified, into the Great Beyond.
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “RED DICK” AND “FIGHTING DAN.” 5
II. THE BAD MAN. 10
III. WILD BILL DISAPPEARS. 16
IV. BUFFALO BILL’S LITTLE JOKE. 22
V. HOW HICKOK CAME TO GRIEF. 30
VI. THE BATTLE IN THE MINE. 37
VII. RED DICK’S CHOICE. 44
VIII. PA-E-HAS-KA TRAPPED. 53
IX. OLD NOMAD FINDS EXCITEMENT. 59
X. LITTLE CAYUSE CAPTURED. 64
XI. THE DYNAMITER AGAIN. 71
XII. THE MYSTERY OF THE MOUNTAINTOP. 78
XIII. MATTERS BECOMING COMPLICATED. 89
XIV. CAYUSE TURNS A TRICK. 95
XV. BUFFALO BILL’S TRUMP CARD. 103
XVI. BUFFALO BILL’S DIFFICULT MISSION. 109
XVII. A TRAGEDY OF THE PLAIN. 117
XVIII. INTERESTING ACQUAINTANCES. 123
XIX. THE MYSTERY OF THE GULCH. 129
XX. NOMAD’S STRANGE WEAPON. 135
XXI. ANOTHER MYSTERY MET. 140
XXII. HICKOK OUTWITTED BY A THIEF. 147
XXIII. IN THE SIOUX CAMP. 155
XXIV. CAYUSE SENTENCED TO DIE. 163
XXV. THE RESCUE OF LITTLE CAYUSE. 170
 XXVI. BUFFALO BILL SAVES TEN. 179
XXVII. THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR. 187
XXVIII. A SUCCESSION OF SURPRISES. 194
XXIX. THE SCOUT VISITS SITTING BULL. 203
XXX. HIDE-RACK’S ADVENTURES. 208
XXXI. THE BOY BUGLER WINS. 214
XXXII. REVENGE OF PRICE. 222
XXXIII. WONDERFUL MIRROR OF THE PLAIN. 225
XXXIV. TRAGEDY OF THE PLAIN. 233
XXXV. AN AGED INDIAN’S STORY. 240
XXXVI. THE QUEEN OE THE STARS. 246
XXXVII. THE SCOUT ON A DIM TRAIL. 252
XXXVIII. WILD BILL’S WILD RIDE. 266
XXXIX. RESCUE OF THE SUPPLY TRAIN. 273
XL. A SET-TO WITH A GRIZZLY. 280
XLI. WONDERS OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN. 285
XLII. LITTLE CAYUSE MISSING. 291
XLIII. CAYUSE FINDS OLD ENEMIES. 297
XLIV. THE PARDS VISIT THE INDIANS. 303
XLV. WILD BILL’S TASK. 310
BUFFALO BILL’S BOY BUGLER.
 CHAPTER I.
“RED DICK” AND “FIGHTING DAN.”
It had come out of the long familiar war between the cattlemen and
sheepmen. “Red Dick” and “Doc” Downs, cattlemen, were on trial for
the shooting of Josh and Cabe Grey, sheep herders, and the
slaughter of three hundred sheep. A typical Western crowd had
drifted into Bozeman, including many soldiers from Fort Ellis. It was
noon and the sun hung high and blazed down relentlessly on the
perspiring spectators, as they poured out of the stuffy courtroom, at
recess. Red Dick and Doc Downs were to be taken across the street
to the hotel for lunch, and the crowd settled across the way to cheer
or hiss the prisoners, as its sympathies dictated, as the handcuffed
men were led forth by the officers.
Red Dick was known as a bad man and he looked the part. He stood
six feet three in his stockings, was straight as an arrow, and, without
an ounce of superfluous flesh, weighed 190 pounds. Contrary to the
suggestion of his cognomen, he was not of Indian descent, but
below the belt of tan at his neck the unbuttoned collar revealed skin
as white as marble. It was a mass of curly, fiery-red hair that had
given Richard Davids, from Vermont, his nickname in the West.
Red Dick’s steely gray eyes flashed, his hawk-bill nose sniffed
contemptuously, and his short-cropped red mustache twitched
nervously as he was led out of the courtroom and the hiss of his
enemies fell on his ears.
Then came hoots and howls and verbal insults, intermingled with
“tigers!” and “good boy, Dick!” “We’ll stand by you, Red!” etc.
At one time it seemed probable that the factional spirit among the
spectators would lead to riot, as the feeling ran high and the crowd
began surging back and forth about the prisoners, preventing the
advance of the officers in charge.
At that moment there was a commotion far down the street, a
clatter of pounding hoofs, a wild yell and a fusillade of revolver
shots. Then there burst on the view of the crowd a figure so
startling as to, for the moment, drive all thoughts of the prisoners
from the minds of the wrangling spectators.
It was a great, rawboned, buckskin stallion, tearing up the main
thoroughfare at a terrific pace, headed directly at the startled crowd.
Astride the animal was a man to match—a tall, gaunt, broad-
shouldered fellow in buckskin trousers and red flannel shirt, his long
mustache sweeping back about his neck and fluttering in the wind
with the corners of the handkerchief knotted there. In each hand the
recognized “bad man” carried a big revolver with which he was
boring holes in the ether by way of announcing his approach.
The horse, with wide-distended nostrils and showing belts of white
around the iris of its eyes, dashed madly at the crowd, which
scattered like chaff.
Almost upon the officers and their prisoners the big rider yelled:
“Whoa!”
The animal stopped so suddenly that it sat upon its haunches and
slid for a yard or two while the rider seemed almost precipitated
over its suddenly dropped head.
He landed squarely in front of the officers, his towering height now
seen to the full, with a gun in each hand, and leaning far forward
until his black and flashing eyes were on a level with those of Red
Dick, he bellowed:
“So yo’re ther skunk thet plugged my brothers, air ye?”
Red Dick, with all his boasted bravery and deeds of dare-deviltry,
cowered before the newcomer.
“It’s ‘Fighting Dan’ Grey!” gasped the crowd, as it scurried for
quarters beyond the line of the big guns, which they felt sure were
soon to be in action.
The officers shrank, too, and reached for their own guns in a half-
hearted way.
Big Fighting Dan disdained the motion to draw on him, except to
roar:
“Keep yer pepper boxes under yer co’t tails, officers, er it’ll be bad
fer yer digestion.
“An’ so yo’re it! hey?” he boomed again.
“Waal, yo’re in ther han’s o’ ther law, jes’ now, an’ old Dan respects
ther law, but Heaven hev mercy on yore pesky hide if I ever set my
eyes onto yuh outside o’ ther clutches o’ ther sheriff an’ his men.”
Shoving his guns into his belt, the dark man continued:
“But I’m hyar an’ yo’re hyar, so now’s ther time ter pay my
complerments—an’ thar yew hev um!”
He had suddenly reached forward, and, before the officers could
protest or others divine his intention, he had grasped Red Dick by
the chin with one hand and by the curling red hair with the other,
and tipped the prisoner’s head far back. Then an amber stream left
Dan’s dark lips, and Red Dick’s face ran with tobacco juice as he was
released, a spluttering, raving, helpless wretch, while Fighting Dan
turned away, swung into his saddle, and with a few parting shots
dashed down the street and disappeared.
Taking advantage of the dazed condition of the crowd, the officers
hurried their prisoners into the hotel.
Red Dick’s handcuffs were removed to allow him to wash the
tobacco stains from his face, but he was in too much of a rage to
eat. He sat and indulged in savage mutterings by way of
intrenchment of his vow to torture Fighting Dan at the stake, if he—
Dick—ever got out of the grip of the law.
Doc Downs had little to say. He had escaped the wrath of Fighting
Dan, for which he was thankful, and the sympathy and hatred of the
crowd seemed to centre on Red Dick, rather than on him.
Doc was shrewd enough to keep still and remain in the background.
Doc was not a practicing physician, as one might infer from his
nickname. If there was anything which Doc knew less about than
another, it was the application of drugs or the uses of lance and
bandage. For some reason which never had been explained, Doc’s
parents had given him the prefix “Modoc.” As a boy he had been
“Mo,” and then “Mod,” now “Doc.”
Doc wasn’t smart enough to be a first-class bad man, although he
had aspirations in that direction, and he was too indolent to earn an
honest living. So, when Red Dick, the dashing cowboy, blew into
town one day and flourished a wad that would have blocked the
pathway of a four-year-old steer, Doc hitched onto the tail of the
curly-haired comet.
There was one thing Doc could do—cook—and by means of that
seldom-exercised talent he had won the favor of Red Dick.
Doc’s allegiance to his employer had got him into this fuss. With Red
he had flourished guns and swaggered before the sheepmen on the
ranges. And one day, when the mix-up came with the Greys, Doc
had closed his eyes and blazed away as Red Dick had done. When
he saw the Greys down, rolling on the ground and groaning, he
became panicky and would have bolted, but for Red Dick, who
ordered that every sheep on the section be shot. Then the two had
spent the remainder of the day in riding down and slaughtering the
innocent animals.
Doc was sorry, and he had no hesitation about saying so—when Red
Dick was beyond hearing.
The sympathies of the cattle raisers were with Red Dick, even at this
early day, for they had begun to feel the increasing encroachment of
the sheep herders on the range. The sheepmen backed the Greys,
who had been seriously wounded in the encounter, as well as
sufferers financially in the loss of three hundred sheep. The Greys
were quiet, peaceable ranchers, and considered honest by those
who knew them.
Fighting Dan was the black sheep in the Grey family. Dan was big,
and fierce, and courageous, and a gambler. He tore big holes in the
atmosphere and made lots of noise, but he had never killed his man,
in spite of his reputation. Dan’s favorite method was physical,
unarmed violence. Two ordinary men were as boys in his grasp. He
delighted in seizing a disputant at cards, to whirl the victim high
above the top of his own head, which was six feet and a half above
the floor.
Fighting Dan had once taken possession of a saloon that had won
his disfavor, and poured liquor down the proprietor’s throat until he
was unconscious. Dan had then set up the drinks for everybody in
sight for half a day.
 CHAPTER II.
THE BAD MAN.

The night of the opening day of the trial of Red Dick, Buffalo Bill and
several of his pards struck town. With the scout were Hickok, Little
Cayuse, and Skibo, the giant negro. Old Nomad was on the way, and
might be expected to “lite” at any hour.
The scout’s orders were direct from the secretary of the interior at
Washington. The encroachments of the cattlemen and sheepmen
upon the Indian reservations and various clashes with the red men
were breeding discontent, and promised a serious outbreak. Buffalo
Bill had been instructed, also, to quietly look into the conduct of
some of the Indian agents in the Northwest. Complaints were finding
their way to Washington, and the rival political party was making
campaign material out of them.
If the Indians were being cheated and robbed by unprincipled
officers, the department wished to make an example of said officers
and preserve peace and the good will of the Indians.
Intruders were flocking upon the Indian lands in search of gold, and
herds of the white men grazed where no human foot had the right
to set, except that of the red man. The buffaloes, which were the
main source of food supply for the Indians, were slain by thousands.
Excursionists and others shot the animals, and their putrefying
carcasses thickly dotted the plains.
It was coming to the knowledge of officials in Washington that there
was an “Indian ring,” which included a corrupt gang of miscreants at
the national capital in league with others in the West. Through this
band of rascals the Indians were provided with worthless rags for
blankets and wretched meat in place of the supplies called for by
treaty contract and provided by the government.
By the manipulations of unscrupulous agents and land thieves the
cultivated lands of the Indians were being taken from them, and
tracts of deserts substituted.
Buffalo Bill well knew that the whites were trampling on the rights of
the red men, and his sympathies were known among both shades of
skin.
Sitting Bull, the famous chief, had always hated the palefaces, and,
nursing the wrongs of his people, he now refused to sign a treaty
giving up certain lands. He had been threatened by bumptious
officials, and on the strength of these threats he had gone among
the powerful Sioux tribes, and exhorted them to prepare for war.
Such men as Generals Sheridan, Canby, Miles, Custer, and others
foresaw serious difficulty with the Indians at a time when the
general public in the East had been lulled into a sense of security in
the belief that the Indian question had been settled for all time.
Buffalo Bill’s mission was to soothe and quiet the Indians, so far as
possible; at the same time he was bringing to justice the leaders in
as corrupt a gang as ever went unhanged. He found the whites not
only robbing the red men, but at war among themselves over
grazing rights.
Enforcement of the law was a farce, and right was much a case of
might.
Bad men flourished and boasted themselves terrors of the universe.
These wild and woolly fellows seldom met, but exercised their
blatant powers over the more submissive portion of the public.
Buffalo Bill’s arrival had not been heralded, and he was not
recognized at the most pretentious hostelry of the Gallatin Valley.
With his pards he made up a quiet little party, who might have been
attracted to town by the trial. No one seemed interested to the point
of curiosity, and the scout was gratified that it was so. The men he
was after might not so soon take alarm.
It was a typical border aggregation that thronged the tavern that
night, the air filled with tobacco smoke and fumes of liquor and
vibrating with loud talk.
Late in the evening Fighting Dan Grey appeared. He was “liquored
up” and looking for trouble. He was dodged by all who could avoid
him, but led men by twos and threes to the bar to drink his health.
He was well supplied with the yellow metal, and everybody had to
drink whom he invited.
Later Dan’s mood changed, and he wanted to play cards. He roped
in one man, and desired two others. Far back in a corner the scout
and the Laramie man sat smoking and watching the constantly
changing aspect of a night gathering of Westerners going through all
stages of acquiring a state of intoxication.
Fighting Dan espied them, and led his victim thither.
“Hyar are ther ombrays thet I propose ter hev er game er cyards
with.”
Dan slammed a table across in front of the scout and Hickok,
churned the partner he had impressed into service into a chair
opposite one for himself, and said:
“Thar! I reckon the’s goin’ to be a game. Hyar, yew long-haired fellar,
ketch holt an’ shake ’em out.”
Buffalo Bill smilingly humored the big, black bad man, whose
counterpart in character he had seen many times. Hickok, too, sat in
good-naturedly, and the quartette proceeded in a friendly game. The
scout and the Laramie man won the first hand, and then Fighting
Dan insisted that all go to the bar and “wash ’er down” at his
expense.
The scout and Hickok declined. The bad man was in a towering rage
at once. He smote the table with a bang that attracted the attention
of every man in the room, and then he bellowed:
“So yer refuses to swaller pizen with me, does ye? Waal, Dan Grey
won’t eat that kind o’ dirt fr’m no long-haired ombray this side o’
Tophet.”
Buffalo Bill sat calmly and smilingly, awaiting the subsidence of the
bad man’s spasm.
Hickok held the deck, and idly shuffled the cards over and over. The
other seized the opportunity to escape.
Half a hundred men turned all attention to the corner where sat the
unruffled scout confronted by the roaring, dark-visaged giant.
Little Cayuse had entered, followed by Skibo. They were attracted to
the scene at once. Skibo edged through the crowd until he was at
Buffalo Bill’s back, and said in an undertone:
“’Scuse me, Mars’ Billyum, but don’t you want ole Skibo to squelch
’im?”
“No, no, Skibo; thanks. I guess it will soon blow over.”
But it didn’t blow over, and the bad man worked himself into a
perfect frenzy while raving at the unterrified scout.
“I’ll make a pin wheel o’ you over my head,” he roared, leaning
forward and grasping Buffalo Bill by the shoulders.
When he had done that the man from Laramie suddenly kicked the
table over, and left nothing between the bad man and his intended
victim.
Dan attempted to change the hold of one of his huge hands from
the scout’s shoulder to the thigh for his usual spectacular
performance, but he found his own wrist suddenly caught in a
viselike grip.
The bad man struggled for the release of his arm, for a moment,
and was manifestly surprised that he could not readily wrench the
imprisoned member from the grasp of any man.
And then, before he realized the possibility of such a happening, the
bad man felt his opponent step in close, and the next instant he was
whirling through the air, to land on a table and crash with it to the
floor.
Fighting Dan got up slowly, and for a moment stared at the scout in
dazed surprise; then he reached for his guns. Before his hands had
fairly touched their butts he found himself peering into the sinister-
looking muzzle of the scout’s rigid revolver.
“Hold on, amigo!” he shouted; “I wa’n’t goin’ ter shoot; I was on’y
goin’ ter take off me weapons an’ git ready ter mop up this hyar
barroom with ye.”
“All right, neighbor; if that is your game I’m agreeable.” And without
a quiver the scout handed his own gun to Hickok and stepped
forward.
Dan deliberately laid his big revolvers on a table, spat on his hands,
and then suddenly rushed.
The scout did not expect such a move from the previous deliberate
movements, but he was not caught at a disadvantage. Wheeling like
a flash, he caught the big fellow, half-buttocked him, and stretched
the giant breathless on his back on the floor. The crowd cheered,
and Fighting Dan regained his feet slowly, a sadder and wiser bad
man. He had never suffered such humiliation before.
“Who be yew, amigo?” he asked, extending his hand.
“Friend,” answered Buffalo Bill; “I have never been ashamed of my
name, but for to-night it is not to be made public property. I am
steering my own canoe without instructions, and I don’t drink at any
man’s order. I am willing to go some distance to please, but it is the
business of no man here what my name may be. Good night.”
Buffalo Bill and his pards pushed through the cheering barroom
gathering which had increased to a mob, and made their way to
their rooms on the floor above.
After the scout had left the discomfited Dan relieved his mind as
follows:
“By ther rip-roarin’ Jeehokibus! That there tarnal is a hull cyclone an’
a few whirlwinds ter boot.”
 CHAPTER III.
WILD BILL DISAPPEARS.

Buffalo Bill had hoped to escape recognition for a time until he could
look into conditions in that locality, but he was not to be so
fortunate, as he learned the moment the four pards were alone in
their large double room.
Bozeman was only one of many of the older towns the scout
expected to visit, in prosecution of his mission, to rout the rogues
who were stealing both from the government and the nation’s
charge, the red man.
“Pa-e-has-ka make um listen,” said Cayuse, as soon as the door had
closed upon the outside. “Heap bad palefaces call Long Hair ‘Buffalo
Bill.’ Pards in home of Great Father tell on string and talks. Pa-e-has-
ka get letter come Virginia City. Bad Crow warriors wait in pass,
shoot Pa-e-has-ka.”
“Where did you get that?” asked the scout of his Indian boy pard.
“All same make um believe sleep on floor Red Tiger Saloon; hear
bad paleface talk.”
“Did you learn their names?”
“One Jim Price, other all same Dave. Jim give Crows bad blankets,
bad meat, bad whisky. Dave sell Indians sand for hunting grounds,
Jim pay Dave good blankets, good meat, good rum.”
“I see; Price is the Indian agent, and Dave is a land shark?”
“Ugh!”
“And they are going to send me a fake message, purporting to come
by wire from Washington, to report at Virginia City. Then on the way
I am to be ambushed and shot by Crow bandits?”
“Ugh!”
“Where do these fellows hang out?”
“All same Red Tiger—drink heap rum.”
“Perhaps I had better run over to the Red Tiger for a little while
before turning in,” remarked the scout, once more buckling on his
belt which he had removed.
“Me go?” asked Cayuse, an appealing look in his black eyes.
“Ole Skibo like pow’ful well to tote along, Mar’s Billyum,” urged the
colored giant.
The scout laughed and said:
“Yes, if you wish, but I think it would pay you better to turn in and
sleep.”
“My sentiments, pard,” added Wild Bill, as he sought the bed.
The other three went out quietly at a side door without meeting any
one, and the noisy crowd in the barroom drowned all sound of their
egress. Five minutes’ walk brought them to the Red Tiger Saloon, a
place of ill repute, even for this wild country. There the cutthroats
and gamblers congregated, and scarcely a week in the year passed
without its tragedy at the Red Tiger. Card disputes sometimes ended
in wholesale shooting, and, only two weeks before, three funerals
resulted from one night’s rough house in the infamous inn.
When Buffalo Bill and his pards arrived the crowd had reached a
stage of drunkenness which dulled its perception, and the strangers
were unnoticed. Several men were stretched out on benches and
floor in drunken stupor, and others were drinking or wrangling as to
whose turn it was to treat. Others were attempting, with drunken
persistence, to play cards, but the stakes at the corners were
knocked about by gesticulating elbows, and coins rolled about the
floor.
Cayuse looked about for a moment, and then approached the scout.
In a low tone he said:
“Price play cards with heap fool drunks; steal um money; Dave
drunk.”
The scout easily picked out Price, and when opportunity offered
approached unnoticed. He also secured a good look at the
debauched face of Dave, so that he could recognize the fellow if
they ever met again.
Price was too drunk to be acute, but he was still sharp enough to
rake in all the money of those with whom he was pretending to play.
Buffalo Bill closely watched the manipulations of this representative
of Uncle Sam, and was soon convinced that the fellow was an
unmitigated scoundrel who would rob his best friend if opportunity
offered.
One man at the table, a miner, had been robbed of his last cent,
despite his protest of unfairness. And then the inevitable row was
started. The victim bunglingly attempted to pull a gun, and his
motion was followed by half a dozen others who were grouped
about the table.
Price was not so far intoxicated as the others, and deftly jerked a
gun to a level with the other’s breast. Somebody in the crowd
accidentally or otherwise discharged a revolver. A fusillade followed,
principally into the floor and ceiling, but when the smoke cleared the
man who had been robbed by Price was on the floor writhing with a
bullet through his body, and Price was pushing through the drunken,
shouting men with a smoking revolver in his hand. He had shot the
man he had robbed and was getting away before officers arrived.
There was no doubt regarding who had shot the miner, in the mind
of Buffalo Bill.
Buffalo Bill did not care to be held to testify in the pretended
investigation which was bound to follow, so he and his friends
slipped away. The report of the coroner would be the usual one:
“Shot by an unknown in a volley by barroom crowd.”
Outside the scout awaited for a time the action of the town’s
protectors. In half an hour the sheriff arrived, and in another half
hour the Western coroner came to take charge of the remains.
Justice certainly did not move on the “hot foot” in that city of
“courage juice” and bad men.
As the scout and his faithful negro and Indian pards were moving
away there came a terrific explosion from the direction of the hotel.
A moment later a red glare sprang up, and then hoarse shouts and
screams of anguish rent the air.
“Must be a boiler explosion,” exclaimed the scout, hastening on,
“and at or near the hotel,” he added.
His worst fears were realized. The disaster had occurred at the hotel,
but it was not a boiler explosion. The entire wing in which Buffalo
Bill and his pards had been assigned quarters had been blown up by
some powerful explosive.
No other explanation was possible than that some one had placed a
heavy explosive under the wing with malicious intent, the proprietor,
who was soon found by Buffalo Bill, declared.
Hundreds of people flocked to the scene, and among them Buffalo
Bill sought for his pard, Wild Bill Hickok, the man from Laramie, the
hero of scores of daring exploits.
The wing was wrecked and the hotel burning, but the scout still
hoped that by some miracle his partner had escaped.
The night wore away, and the fire was conquered only when the
hotel was in ashes. Two other guests of the hotel were missing, and
half a dozen had been more or less seriously injured.
Buffalo Bill haunted the scene of disaster. He could not give up hope
that Hickok had escaped. But no clue was uncovered that led to any
other conclusion than that Wild Bill had perished miserably.
Then Buffalo Bill began an investigation on his own hook to discover
the author of the tragedy. Lambert, the hotel proprietor, had no idea
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