This expedition did not prove very profitable, and not wishing to return home without enough furs to bring a fair sum, Buffalo Billy joined a young man, only a few years his senior, by the name of Dave Harrington, and the two started off for the Republican.

Their outfit consisted of a wagon and yoke of oxen, for the transportation of their supplies and pelts, and they began trapping in the vicinity of Junction City, Kansas, and went up the Republican to Prairie Dog creek, where they found plenty of beaver.

While catching a large number of beavers, one day they returned to camp to find one of their oxen had fallen over a precipice and killed himself, and they were left without a team.

But the Boy Trappers, for Dave Harrington was not eighteen, determined to trap on through the winter, and in the spring one of them would go for a team to haul back their wagon.

Ill fortune seemed however to dog their steps as trappers, for one day, while chasing elk, Buffalo Billy fell and broke his leg, and Dave Harrington had to carry him to camp.

Here was a sad predicament, for the nearest settlement was one hundred miles distant.

But Dave set the leg as skillfully as he could, built a “dug-out,” for the wounded boy to live in, filled it with wood and provisions, and then set out to procure a yoke of oxen and sled to return for Billy and their pelts.

The “dug-out,” was a hole in the side of a bank, covered with poles, grass and sod, and with a fire-place in one end, and a bunk near it, was by no means uncomfortable; but the prospect of remaining there for a month alone, for it would take Harrington that time to go and return through the deep snow, was by no means a pleasant prospect for a boy under fourteen, and with a broken leg.

Dave started the following morning on foot, and Billy was left alone, helpless, and in the solitude of the mountain wilds.

To throw wood on the fire was a painful effort for him, and to move so as to cook his food was torture, and boys of his age can well feel for him in distress and loneliness.

But Buffalo Billy was made of stern stuff, and knew not what fear was; but who can picture the thoughts that were constantly in his young brain, when the winds were sweeping through the pines at night, the wolves were howling about his door, and the sleet and snow was almost continually falling.

It were enough to drive a strong man mad, let alone a boy.

But he stood it bravely, each day however counting with longing heart the hours that went so slowly by, and hoping for his comrade’s return.

“Perhaps he has been frozen to death.”

That was his thought one day about Harrington.

The next it was: 

“I wonder if he has not lost his way?”

Again it was: 

“I fear the Indians may have killed him.”

When Dave had been gone about two weeks, Buffalo Billy was startled one day from a sound nap, to see an Indian standing by his side.