be a Juan Fernandez, or a Mount Washington
weatherologist, or something lonesome and sad, as my readers know.
Fighting Indians would be a terrible risky business; but compared to
facing the "girls of the period" it would be the merest play. I was
weary of a life that was all mistakes. "Better throw it away," I
thought, bitterly, "and give my scalp to dangle at a redskin's belt,
than make another one of my characteristic and preposterous blunders."

I had heard that Buffalo Bill was about to start for the Rocky
Mountains, and I wrote to New York asking permission to join him. He
answered that I could, if I was prepared to pay my own way. I
immediately bade my relatives farewell, went home, borrowed two
hundred dollars of father, told mother she was the only woman I wasn't
afraid of, kissed her good-bye, and met Buffalo Bill at the next large
town by appointment, he being already on his way West. I came home
_after dark_, and left again _before daylight_, and that was the last
I saw of my native village for some time.

"You don't let on yer much of a fighter?" asked the great scout, as he
saw me hunt all over six pockets and blush like a girl when the
conductor came for our tickets, and finally hand him a postal-card
instead of the bit of pasteboard he was impatiently waiting to punch.

"Oh, I guess I'll fight like a rat when it comes to that," I answered.
"I'm brave as a lion--only I'm bashful."

"Great tomahawks! is that yer disease?" groaned Bill.

"Yes, that's my trouble," I said, quite confidentially, for somehow I
seemed to get on with the brave hunter more easily than with the
starched minions of society. "I'm bashful, and I'm tired of civilized
life. I'm always putting my foot in it when I'm trying the hardest to
keep it out. Besides, I'm in love, and the girl I want don't want me.
It's either deliberate suicide or death on the plains with me."

"Precisely. I understand. _I've been thar!_" said Buffalo Bill; and we
got along well together from the first.

He encouraged the idea that in my present state of mind I would make a
magnificent addition to his chosen band; but I have since had some
reason to believe that he was leading me on for the sole purpose of
making a scarecrow of me--setting me up in some spot frequented by
the redskins, to become their target, while he and his comrades
scooped down from some ambush and wiped out a score or two of them
after I had perished at my post. I _suspect_ this was hi