he joined a company of Indians engaged by Buffalo Bill to simulate
before civilized communities the sports and customs of the uncivilized.
In divers Christian arenas of the nineteenth century he rode as a
northern barbarian of the first might have disported before the Roman
populace, but harmlessly, of his own free will, and of some little
profit to himself. He threw his lasso under the curious eyes of languid
men and women of the world, eager for some new sensation, with admiring
plaudits from them and a half contemptuous egotism of his own. But
outside of the arena he was lonely, lost, and impatient for excitement.

An ingenious attempt to "paint the town red" did not commend itself as a
spectacle to the householders who lived in the vicinity of Earl's Court,
London, and Alkali Dick was haled before a respectable magistrate by a
serious policeman, and fined as if he had been only a drunken coster. A
later attempt at Paris to "incarnadine" the neighborhood of the Champs
de Mars, and "round up" a number of boulevardiers, met with a more
disastrous result,--the gleam of steel from mounted gendarmes, and a
mandate to his employers.

So it came that one night, after the conclusion of the performance,
Alkali Dick rode out of the corral gate of the Hippodrome with his
last week's salary in his pocket and an imprecation on his lips. He had
shaken the sawdust of the sham arena from his high, tight-fitting boots;
he would shake off the white dust of France, and the effeminate soil
of all Europe also, and embark at once for his own country and the Far
West!

A more practical and experienced man would have sold his horse at the
nearest market and taken train to Havre, but Alkali Dick felt himself
incomplete on terra firma without his mustang,--it would be hard enough
to part from it on embarking,--and he had determined to ride to the
seaport.

The spectacle of a lithe horseman, clad in a Rembrandt sombrero, velvet
jacket, turnover collar, almost Van Dyke in its proportions, white
trousers and high boots, with long curling hair falling over his
shoulders, and a pointed beard and mustache, was a picturesque one, but
still not a novelty to the late-supping Parisians who looked up under
the midnight gas as he passed, and only recognized one of those men whom
Paris had agreed to designate as "Booflo-bils," going home.

At three o'clock he pulled up at a wayside cabaret, preferring it to
the publicity of a larger hotel, and lay