CHAPTER XXIII.
IN FETTERS.
All the time that Buffalo Bill was driving stage his thoughts were turning to dark-eyed pretty Louise Frederici in her pleasant Missouri home, and at last he became so love-sick that he determined to pay her a visit and ask her to marry him at once.
He was no longer a boy in size, but a tall, elegantly-formed man, though his years had not yet reached twenty-one.
He had saved up some money, and off to Missouri he started, and his strangely-handsome face, superb form and comely manners were admired wherever he went, and people wondered who he was, little dreaming they were gazing upon a man who had been a hero since his eighth year.
He soon won Louise over to his way of thinking, by promising he would settle down, and they were married at farmer Frederici's home and started on their way, by a Missouri steamer, to Kansas.
Arriving at Leavenworth, Buffalo Bill and his bride received a royal welcome from his old friends, and they were escorted to their new home, where for awhile the young husband did "settle down." But at last, finding he could make more money on the plains, and that being to his liking, he left his wife with his sisters and once more started for the far West, this time as a Government scout at Fort Ellsworth..