Young Bill Cody inherited his love of horses and showmanship from his father, who was a farmer, stagecoach driver, and free-soil politician in the early days of the last century. As a boy, Bill got his first pioneering experience in Kansas, helping to build a cabin for his family and hunting horses that had stampeded from Leavenworth. Here he made friends with the Kickapoo Indian boys and learned to shoot with a bow and arrow, while his cousin, Horace, taught him how to break a pony and showed him other skills needed by a scout.
After his father’s death Bill had to support the family, so he went to work herding cattle. On his way to Utah with a drove of beef cattle, his outfit was attacked by Indians and Bill at the age of eleven shot his first Indian and saved his comrades.
In 1869 Bill went on the stage as a hero of western melodramas. It was then he first thought of having a Wild West show, but it was not until some years later that he actually got one together, with some of the most exciting figures of the day such as Chief Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley. The show was so successful that at the high point of his career he took it on a grand European tour.
Edmund Collier’s exciting new story of Buffalo Bill—one of America’s most colorful personalities—will delight every boy and girl.
—from the dust jacket
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