Beadle's Dime Library No. 826

# Museum Catalog Note

This issue of Buffalo Bill's Sharp-Shooters contains "The Surgeon Scout to the Rescue: A Romance of the Fighting Braves and Buckskins" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, illustrated with Buffalo Bill observing through a field-glass from a tree. The serial opens with Buffalo Bill discovering two Indian chiefs—Knife Killer, a Pawnee, and Death Dealer, a Sioux—meeting alone to settle a dispute through ritualized knife combat. Buffalo Bill witnesses their violent duel from hiding. When Death Dealer gains the advantage over the mortally wounded Knife Killer, Buffalo Bill intervenes, disarming the Sioux chief, who dies from his wounds moments later. Buffalo Bill then tends to Knife Killer's nine wounds with field medicines, allows him to take his enemy's scalp, shares his blankets and provisions of venison, bacon, and coffee. The narrative establishes the beginning of an alliance between the legendary scout and the Pawnee chief, who declares himself Buffalo Bill's brother for life.