Read Buffalo Bill Wanted! for Free Online Page B

is paying for all this?”
    â€œCould be.” Mr. Shears shrugged. “Sometimes he does this to make himself look important. East Enders are Pryke’s favorite audience. Folk round here are poor enough—ignorant enough—angry enough—to swallow his kind of ‘oratory.’ ”
    J. Montague Pryke began his speech. He started off sounding reasonable. But his voice began to rise as he called up every argument the British had had with their American cousins since the colonies broke away in 1776. Americans, it seemed, were just naturally greedy, crude, and treacherous in general. And when it came to Buffalo Bill and his performers in particular, Pryke painted an even worse picture. Colonel Cody and the cowboys represented some sort of nasty subhumans not fit to live in decent society. The Indians were even worse.
    â€œThey’re a degenerate race that refuses to be civilized and that treats civilized folk with the utmost savagery,” Pryke shouted. “But when this Yankee brings his freak show to London—to the center of world civilization—what happens? Thirty to forty thousand people pack each performance. He dines with the finest in the land and sends millions back to America. Is this right?”
    Faces red, eyes bulging, torches shaking, the crowd shouted, “NO!”
    â€œBut is Cody content? No! He unleashes his pet savages on the very symbol of decent, civilized London life—one of the honest bobbies who work to protect us all. Will we stand for this?”
    For Wiggins, like most East Enders, the less he had to do with the coppers, the better. But now, his neighbors were ready to die for this injured constable. And I’d be yelling right beside them, he realized with some embarrassment, except I met Buffalo Bill and saw what sort of man he is. I saw Silent Eagle risk his life calming that buffalo to save a crowd of people he didn’t even know —people who would mock him as an ignorant savage.
    He looked to see his friends’ reactions. Jennie’s lips were tight. “My friend Jacob told me stories about meetings like this in Russia,” she said. “Afterward, the people took their torches to burn down the Jewish part of town.”
    â€œHappens here too,” Owens added grimly.
    Wiggins didn’t know what to say to that, so he turned away. Then he froze, staring.
    Owens noticed. “What is it?”
    Wiggins jerked his head off to the left. “I recognize someone over there. Natty Blount.” Natty had been a pickpocket when Wiggins brought him into the Baker Street Irregulars, the boys who did odd jobs for Sherlock Holmes. But he became another kind of thief, stealing control of the Irregulars from Wiggins. Owens’s hand tightened on Wiggins’s shoulder as he spotted Blount not twenty feet from them, waving a torch and yelling his head off.
    Seeing the petty thief who had wrecked the Baker Street Irregulars filled Wiggins with familiar anger —and sudden suspicion. He began searching the crowd for other faces he knew.
    They were easy enough to spot—shorter figures, all of them waving torches. Once they had been Sherlock Holmes’s eyes and ears all over London. Now they were just another gang of street toughs. They cared nothing for politics or patriotism, just cold, hard cash. If they were here, they were here for money and no other reason.
    â€œPryke ain’t alone in whipping up the crowd,” Wiggins told the others. “He’s got a mob for hire helping him.”
    Jennie’s eyebrows drew together. “I wonder what that means?”
    Wiggins and Owens exchanged worried looks. “It means,” Wiggins said slowly, “that someone is out to cause trouble for Colonel Cody and the Americans.”

Chapter 6
    â€œARCHIBALD WIGGINS! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Wiggins’s mother stood in the doorway of their rooms, her hands on her hips and a grim expression on her face.