Buffalo Bill Cody was bigger than life. He was also braver, handsomer, and kinder--in short, just about perfect, as any reader of Prentiss Ingraham's dime novels could tell you. Along with his nearly 600 novels and plays, Ingraham (1843-1904), Confederate colonel and mercenary, penned a biography of his hero. The Buffalo Bill Cody who emerges from this book is not so very different from the paragon in Ingraham's novels, but as Cody's close companion,...