The Life of Hon. William F. Cody, Known as Buffalo Bill, The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide

8vo original blindstamped cloth, with gilt cover vignette, spine lettered in gilt, 365pp. illustrated (steel engraved frontispiece portrait and numerous wood engravings). Covers well stained and worn; new endpapers, foxing to frontispiece and lightly to title page, some soiling within, else good. Cody (1846-1917) the western legend was born in Scott County Iowa in 1846. In April of 1860 he signed on as a Pony Express rider, and by 1863 was a scout with the Kansas Cavalry in operations against the Kiowas and Comanches. By 1868 he was working for a meat contractor who supplied the Kansas Pacific railway construction crews with buffalo meat. He was so good at it he earned the nickname ‘Buffalo Bill’. By the late 1860s he was already a legend, and a friend wrote a play about him called ‘Scouts of the Prairies’, which he produced in 1872. When the Sioux War broke out he went back to being the chief scout for the 5th Cavalry. On July 17, 1876 he fought a famous duel with Yellow Hand, a son of a Cheyenne chief, after an intense battle he killed and scalped the vanquished Indian. This is a rare first edition of this work, which according to Graff only three or four thousand copies were sold.