In order to entirely avoid the roughs, the members of the company entered the theater through a private door from the hotel, as the two buildings joined each other.  While I was standing at the door of the theater taking the tickets, the landlord of the hotel came rushing up and said that Wild Bill was having a fight with the roughs in the bar-room.  It seemed that Bill had not been able to resist the temptation of going to see what kind of a mob it was that wanted to test the pluck of the Buffalo Bill party; and just as he stepped into the room, one of the bruisers put his hand on his shoulder and said: 

“Hello, Buffalo Bill! we have been looking for you all day.”

“My name is not Buffalo Bill; you are mistaken in the man,” was the reply.

“You are a liar!” said the bruiser.

Bill instantly knocked him down, and then seizing a chair he laid out four or five of the crowd on the floor, and drove the rest out of the room.  All this was done in a minute or two, and by the time I got down stairs, Bill was coming out of the bar-room, whistling a lively tune.

“Well!” said he, “I have been interviewing that party who wanted to clean us out.”

“I thought you promised to come into the Opera House by the private entrance?”

“I did try to follow that trail, but I got lost among the canons, and then I ran in among the hostiles,” said he; “but it is all right now.  They won’t bother us any more.  I guess those fellows have found us.”  And sure enough they had.  We heard no more of them after that.

Another incident occurred, one night, at Portland, Maine.  Bill found it impossible to go to sleep at the hotel on account of the continued talking of some parties who were engaged in a game of cards in an adjoining room.  He called to them several times to make less noise, but they paid little or no attention to him.  He finally got up and went to the room with the intention of cleaning out the whole crowd.  He knocked and was admitted; greatly to his surprise, he found the party to be some merchants of the city, whom he had met the previous day.  They were playing poker, and invited him to take a hand.  Bill sat down at the table, and said that, inasmuch as they would not let him sleep, he wouldn’t mind playing for a while, provided they would post him a little in the game, for he didn’t know much about it.  At first he didn’t play very well, intentionally making many blunders and asking numerous questions; but when morning came, he was about seven hundred dollars ahead.  Bill put the money in his pocket, and just as he was leaving the room he advised them never to wake a man up and invite him to play poker.

[Illustration:  LEARNING THE GAME.]

Wild Bill remained with me until we reached Rochester.  I met my family there, and having bought some property in that city, with the intention of making the place my home, I asked Bill not to cut up any of his capers, for I wanted the performance to go off smoothly, as I expected a large audience that evening.  He, of course, promised to behave himself.  When the curtain rose the house was crowded.  The play proceeded finely until the Indian fight in the second act, when Bill amused himself by his old trick of singeing the legs of the “supers.”