lo? What
city-bred boy could "hold a candle" to the glaring halo about the head
of two who could claim personal acquaintance with the great war chiefs
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail?--who had actually been to ride and hunt with
that then just dawning demigod of American boyhood,--Buffalo Bill? Sneer
and scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was
crushed and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before
the whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of
plainsmen, that idol of all well-bred young Westerners, he whom only on
flaring posters or in the glare of the footlights had they been
permitted to see, and smiling, superbly handsome, king of scouts and
Indian-fighters, Buffalo Bill himself stepped into their midst and
clasped the little Cranstons, madly rejoicing, in his arms, while their
father, the cavalry captain, and even the dreaded teacher looked
approvingly on. It was after that episode of no avail for even the
sturdiest of their schoolmates to seek to belittle the Cranston fame.
Louis, the elder, could not invent a whopper so big as to tax the
credulity of the school. Buffalo Bill was "starring it" with his
theatrical company through the States that spring, playing some
blood-curdling, scalp-taking; hair-raising border drama which all boys
eager strove to see, and when his old chum and comrade, the captain,
went to call on him at his hotel, the great chief of scouts would not
rest until together they had gone to see his friends "the boys." That
other parents should have been pestered half to death as a result of
this visitation any one who knows boys has not to be told, and many were
the queries and complaints addressed to the laughing cavalryman upon
that score. Parents, as a rule, had no proper conception of the honest
merit and deserved fame of this transplanted hero, Bill,--were amazed
to learn from Cranston that he was no fraud at all, but a man whom he
and his regimental comrades swore by. A total change had come over the
spirit of the school-boys' dreams. Nothing but Indian raids,
buffalo-hunts, or terrific combats diversified the hour of recess. The
little girls chose romantic prairie names, were either Indian maidens or
ever-ready-to-be-rescued damsels in distress. The boys became
redoubtable chiefs or rival imitation scouts, but Louis Cranston alone
was permitted to play the _role_ of Buffalo Bill; in his presence no
other boy dare attempt it.

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