The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 29: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. 27 nature and education a hunter. He was going, he said, to seek a fresh field for the exercise of his pro- fession in the great West. This gave him an excel- lent excuse for asking all sorts of questions as to the country, people, and routes. To still further mislead any who might look upon him with suspicious eyes, he assumed the broad dia- lect of the frontier, and | am bound to say that ina very short time he had so completely mastered it that the sharpest person would have scarcely sus- pected he was feigning. His skillful inquiries elicited a great deal of useful information. He discovered that there were only two ways of reaching the point he had determined to visit first—Fort Hays. One way was to cross the plains in a wagon, and the other was to go by boat. It was still too early in the season to adopt the for- . mer method. In many places the snow remained yet, effectually blocking possible progress. The water route was his only alternative. The rivers were comparatively free from ice, and a journey of the length he proposed tomake could be accom- plished easily. The route lay up the Missouri for three or four miles, then turned into the Kansas, or Kaw River, following its course westward until the mouth of the Smoky should be reached. By pushing on up this stream he could gain a point only a few miles distant from his objective spot, whence a walk over- land could be made without difficulty. He was confident of the feasibility of his scheme, and broached the subject to several persons with whom he had become acquainted. Dan next began to search for some person who would guide him on his journey. Here the first ob- Gomicbooks €o