|IT HAD been a day of triumph at Erastina. Buffalo Bill, returning
from Marlborough House, had amused the populace with the sports of an
amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city.
A mighty multitude of people from Perth Amboy and New York had been
present to watch the attack on the Dead wood coach and view with bated
breath the conflict in the arena.
The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from
the bleaching boards and the lights in the palace of the cowboy band
were extinguished. The moon piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped
the dark waters about Constable Hook with a wavy, tremulous light.
The dark-browed Roman soldier, wearing an umbrella belonging to Imre
Kiralfy, wabbled slowly homeward, the proud possessor of a large
rectangular "jag."
No sound was heard save the low sob of some retiring wave as it told
its story to the smooth pebbles of the beach, or the lower sob of some
gentleman who had just sought to bed down a brand-new bucking bronco
from Ogallalla and decided to escape violently through the roof of the
tent; then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed.
Anon the smoke-tanned Cheyenne snore would steal in upon the silence and
then die away like the sough of a summer breeze. In the green-room of
the amphitheatre a little band of warriors had assembled. The foam of
conflict yet lingered on their lips, the scowl of battle yet hung upon
their brows, and the large knobs on their classic profiles indicated
that it had been a busy day with them. The night wynd blew chill and
the warrior had added to his moss-agate ear-bobs a heavy coat of
maroon-colored roof paint.
There was an embarrassing silence of a little spell and then Red Shirt,
fighting chief of the Sioux Nation borrowed a chew of tobacco from
Aurelius Poor Doe, stepped forth and thus addressed them:
Fellow-Citizens and Gentlemen of the Wild West: Ye call me chief, and
ye do well to call him chief who for two long years has met in the arena
every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Nebraska could
furnish, and yet has never lowered his arm.
If there be one among you can say that ever at grub dance or scalp
german or on the war-path my action did belie my tongue let him stand
forth and say it and I will send him home with his daylights done up in
the morning paper. If there be three in all your company dare face me
on the bloody sands let them come on and I will bore holes in the arena
with them and utilize them in fixing up a sickening spectacle.
And yet I was not alway thus, a hired butcher attacking a Deadwood
coach, both afternoon and evening, the savage chief of still more savage
men.
My ancestors came from Illinois. They dwelt there in the vine-clad hills
and citron groves of the Sangamon at a time when the country was overrun
with Indians. Instead of paying to see Indians, my ancestors would walk
a long distance over a poor road in order to get a shot at a white man.
In Dakota my early life ran quiet as the clear brook by which I babbled,
and my boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We bathed in the soiled
waters of the upper Missouri and ate the luscious prickly pear in the
land of the Dakotahs.
I did not then know what war was, but when Sitting Bull told me of
Marathon and Leuctra and Bull Run, and how at a fortified railroad pass
Imre Kiralfy had withstood the whole Roman army, my cheek burned, I knew
not why, and I thought what a glorious thing it would be to leave the
reservation and go upon the warpath. But my mother kissed my throbbing
temples and bade me go soak my head and think no more of those old tales
and savage wars.
That very night the entire regular army and wife landed on our coasts.
They tore down our tepee, stampeded our stock, stole our grease paints
and played a mean trick on our dog.
To-day in the arena I killed a man in the Black Hills coach, and when I
undid his cinch, behold! he was my friend. The same sweet smile was on
his face that I had noted when I met him on my trip abroad. He knew me
smiled faintly, made a few false motions and died. I begged that I might
bear away the body to my tepee and express it to his country seat,
near Limerick, and upon my bended knees, amid the dust and blood of
the arena, I begged this pool favor, and a Roman prætor from St. George
answered: "Let the carrion rot. There are no noble men but Romans and
banana men. Let the show go on. Give us our money's worth. Bring out
the bobtail lion from Abyssinia and the bucking bronco from Dead Man's
Ranch." And the assembled maids and matrons and the rabble shouted in
derision and told me to brace up, and bade Johnnie git his gun, git his
gun, git his gun, and other vile flings which I do not now recall. And
so must you, fellow warriors, and so must I, die like dogs. Ye stand
here like giants (N. Y. Giants) as ye are, but to-morrow the fangs of
the infuriated buffalo may sink into your quivering flesh. To-night
ye stand here in the full flush of health and conscious rectitude, but
to-morrow some crank may shoot you from the Deadwood coach.
Hark! Hear ye yon buffalo roaring in her den? 'Tis three days since she
tasted flesh, but to-morrow she will have warrior on toast, and don't
you forget it. And she will fling your vertebrae about her cage like the
costly Etruscan pitcher of a League nine.
If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the
butcher's knife. If ye are men, arise and follow me. We will beat down
the guard, overpower the ticket-chopper and cut for the tall timber. We
will go through Ellum Park, Port Richmond, Tower Hill, West Brighton,
Sailors' Snug Harbor and New Brighton like a colored revival through a
watermelon patch, beat down the walls of the Circus Maximus, tear the
mosquito bars from the windows of Nero's palace, capture the Roman
ballet and light out for Europe.
O comrades! warriors!! gladiators!!!
If we be men, let us die like men, beneath the blue sky, don't you know,
and by the still waters, according to Gunter, in the presence of the
nobility, rather than be stepped on by a spoiled bronco, surrounded by
low tradesmen from New York.