Flaming Zeppelins Read Online Free PDF Page B

a damn lie. But I’ll look into it.” Then to Buntline: “Get my head inside the tent. These electric lights are making me hot. I feel hungry, too.”
    The cowboy rode away.
    â€œYou don’t eat,” Buntline said.
    â€œI know that, you idiot. How in the world did you ever write my adventures?”
    â€œHell, I just do what you do. I make them up.”
    Buntline picked up Cody and started for their tent.
    Annie said to Hickok, “They’re cutting up a man? You mean like those poor Chinese?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Hickok said. “It wouldn’t surprise me to discover they’re cutting on someone most of the time. But I won’t lie to you. My curiosity is getting the better of me.”
    Hickok laid the Winchester he was cleaning on the bench, wiped the gun oil from his hands, headed for Cody’s tent, Annie walking alongside.
    Hickok threw back the flap on Cody’s tent, peeked inside. Cody’s jar had been placed on a crate. The lid of the jar had been removed, and Buntline, with a long straw, was poking through the liquid into a hole in the top of Cody’s head.
    â€œOh, yeah. That feels good. I feel like I’m eating something.”
    â€œWhat’s it taste like?” Buntline asked.
    â€œAnything and everything,” Cody said, “but I’m going to think it’s a big buffalo steak with a burnt potato. And beer. Plenty of beer.”
    â€œI don’t mean to interrupt you at mealtime,” Hickok said. “But we overheard that cowboy out there, and since it’s none of our business, we thought we’d ask what that was all about…a man being cut up and all.”
    â€œCome in,” Cody said. “That Annie with you? Why sure, come in, darlin’. Good show. You’ve never been better.
Scouts of the Prairie
certainly went over like a lead balloon, didn’t it, Wild Bill?”
    â€œFar as I’m concerned, it always does.”
    â€œWhat exactly is it you and Ned are doing?” Annie asked Cody. “Or should I ask?”
    â€œI’m eating. Sort of.”
    â€œDoctor Chuck Darwin came up with it after the accident,” Buntline said. “Him and Morse. Darwin discovered that if you stimulated certain parts of the brain in rats, they thought they had eaten. You could do this until the little buggers died of starvation. But they’d think they were full. Having worked on rats, Darwin thought it would work on Buffalo Bill, his ownself. And it does.”
    â€œWon’t you starve to death too?” Annie asked.
    â€œNot in this fluid,” Cody said. “And Morse is taking care of the body. Someday, we’ll reconnect them. And I’ll be slimmer to boot. Morse told me last time we talked that he’d allowed the body to shed a few pounds.”
    â€œAbout this man being cut,” Hickok said. “Know about it?”
    Cody was silent for a moment. He said, “Ned. Put the lid on the jar, then I want you and Annie to listen, Bill. I know who it is being cut up. It’s why we’re here.”
    â€œI thought we were here for a Wild West Show,” Annie said.
    â€œI thought we were here on a kind of diplomatic mission,” Hickok said.
    â€œYes and yes…and no,” Cody said. “President Grant thought after the disaster at the Little Big Horn, all those Japanese warriors being slain under Custer’s fool command…well, we needed some diplomatic work. But there’s more.”
    â€œI don’t keep up with politics,” Annie said. “Enlighten me.”
    â€œEver since the Japanese discovered America’s West Coast, and the Europeans discovered the East Coast, there’s been tension. In the last few years our expansion has outdone that of the Japanese, and both nations have crushed the Indian in the middle. We’ve even worked together at doing it. Now, well, frankly, after the Civil War and the founding of