"BUFFALO BILL" AND "BUFFALO CHIPS."
In all these years of campaigning, the Fifth Cavalry has had varied and
interesting experiences with a class of men of whom much has been
written, and whose names, to readers of the dime novel and _New York
Weekly_ style of literature, were familiar as household words; I mean
the "Scouts of the Prairie," as they have been christened. Many a
peace-loving citizen and thousands of our boys have been to see Buffalo
Bill's thrilling representations on the stage of the scenes of his life
of adventure. To such he needs no introduction, and throughout our
cavalry he is better known than any general except Crook.
A motley set they are as a class--these scouts; hard riding, hard
swearing, hard drinking ordinarily, and not all were of unimpeachable
veracity. But there was never a word of doubt or question in the Fifth
when Buffalo Bill came up for discussion. He was chief scout of the
regiment in Kansas and Nebraska in the campaign of 1868-69, when the
hostiles were so completely used up by General Carr. He remained with us
as chief scout until the regiment was ordered to Arizona to take its
turn at the Apaches in 1871, and nothing but his having a wife and
family prevented his going thither. Five years the regiment was kept
among the rocks and deserts of that marvellous land of cactus and
centipede; but when we came homeward across the continent and were
ordered up to Cheyenne to take a hand in the Sioux war of 1876, the
first addition to our ranks was Buffalo Bill himself. He was "starring
it" with his theatrical troupe in the far East, and read in the papers
that the Fifth was ordered to the support of General Crook. It was
Bill's benefit night at Wilmington, Delaware. He rushed through the
performance, paid off his company, took the midnight express, and four
days later sprang from the Union Pacific train at Cheyenne, and was
speedily exchanging greetings with an eager group of his old comrades,
reinstated as chief scout of the regiment.
Of his services during the campaign that followed, a dozen articles
might be written. One of his best plays is founded on the incidents of
our fight of the 17th of July with the Cheyenne Indians, on the War
Bonnet, for it was there he killed the warrior Yellow Hand, in as plucky
a single combat on both sides as is ever witnessed. The Fifth had a
genuine affection for Bill; he was a tried and true comrade--one who for
cool daring and judgment had no superior. He was a beautiful horseman,
an unrivalled shot, and as a scout unequalled. We had tried them
all--Hualpais and Tontos in Arizona; half-breeds on the great plains. We
had followed Custer's old guide, "California Joe," in Dakota; met
handsome Bill Hickox (Wild Bill) in the Black Hills; trailed for weeks
after Crook's favorite, Frank Gruard, all over the Big Horn and Powder
River country; hunted Nez Perces with Cosgrove and his Shoshones among
the Yellowstone mountains, and listened to "Captain Jack" Crawford's
yarns and rhymes in many a bivouac in the Northwest. They were all noted
men in their way, but Bill Cody was the paragon.
This time it is not my purpose to write of him, but, _for_ him, of
another whom I've not yet named. The last time we met, Cody and I, he
asked me to put in print a brief notice of a comrade who was very dear
to him, and it shall be done now.
James White was his name; a man little known east of the Missouri, but
on the Plains he was Buffalo Bill's shadow. I had met him for the first
time at McPherson station in the Platte valley, in 1871, when he came to
me with a horse, and the simple introduction that he was a friend of
Cody's. Long afterwards we found how true and stanch a friend, for when
Cody joined us at Cheyenne as chief scout he brought White with him as
assistant, and Bill's recommendation secured his immediate employment.
On many a long day's march after that White rode by my side along the
flanks of the column, and I got to know him well. A simpler-minded,
gentler frontiersman never lived. He was modesty and courtesy itself,
conspicuous mainly because of two or three unusual traits for his
class--he never drank, I never heard him swear, and no man ever heard
him lie.
For years he had been Cody's faithful follower--half servant, half
"pardner." He was Bill's "Fidus Achates;" Bill was his adoration. They
had been boys together, and the hero worship of extreme youth was simply
intensified in the man. He copied Bill's dress, his gait, his carriage,
his speech--everything he could copy; he let his long yellow hair fall
low upon his shoulders in wistful imitation of Bill's glossy brown
curls. He took more care of Bill's guns and horses than he did of his
own; and so, when he finally claimed, one night at Laramie, the right to
be known by some other title than simple Jim White--something
descriptive, as it were, of his attachment for Cody and life-long
devotion to his idol "Buffalo Bill," a grim quartermaster (Morton, of
the Ninth Infantry), dubbed him "Buffalo Chips," and the name was a
fixture.
Poor, honest-hearted "Chips"! His story was a brief one after that
episode. We launched out from Laramie on the 22d of June, and, through
all the vicissitudes of the campaign that followed, he was always near
the Fifth. On the Yellowstone Cody was compelled to bid us a reluctant
farewell. He had theatrical engagements to meet in the fall, and about
the end of August he started on General Terry's boat for Fort Buford and
the States. "Chips" remained in his capacity as scout, though he seemed
sorely to miss his "pardner."
It was just two weeks after that we struck the Sioux at Slim Buttes,
something of which I told you in a former chapter. You may remember that
the Fifth had ridden in haste to the relief of Major Mills, who had
surprised the Indians away in our front early Saturday morning, had
whipped them in panicky confusion out of their "tepees" into the
neighboring rocks, and then had to fight on the defensive against ugly
odds until we rode in to the rescue. As the head of our column jogged in
among the lodges, and General Carr directed us to keep on down to face
the bluffs to the south, Mills pointed to a ravine opening out into the
village, with the warning, "Look out for that gully; there are two or
three wounded Indians hidden in there, and they've knocked over some of
my men."
Everybody was too busy just then to pay much attention to two or three
wounded Indians in a hole. We were sure of getting them when wanted. So,
placing a couple of sentinels where they could warn stragglers away from
its front, we formed line along the south and west of the captured
village, and got everything ready to resist the attack we knew they
would soon make in full force.
General Crook had arrived on the scene, and, while we were waiting for
"Lo" to resume the offensive, some few scouts and packers started in to
have a little fun "rousting out them Injuns." Half a dozen soldiers got
permission to go over and join in while the rest of us were hungrily
hunting about for something to eat. The next thing, we heard a volley
from the ravine, and saw the scouts and packers scattering for cover.
One soldier held his ground--shot dead. Another moment, and it became
apparent that not one or two, but a dozen Indians were crouching
somewhere in that narrow gorge, and the move to get them out assumed
proportions. Lieutenant Clark, of General Crook's staff, sprang into the
entrance, carbine in hand, and a score of cavalrymen followed, while
the scouts and others went cautiously along either bank, peering warily
into the cave-like darkness at the head. A squad of newspaper
correspondents, led by that reckless Hibernian, Finerty, of the _Chicago
Times_, came tearing over, pencil in hand, all eagerness for items, just
as a second volley came from the concealed foe, and three more of their
assailants dropped, bleeding, in their tracks. Now our people were
fairly aroused, and officers and men by dozens hurried to the scene. The
misty air rang with shots, and the chances looked bad for those
redskins. Just at this moment, as I was running over from the western
side, I caught sight of "Chips" on the opposite crest. All alone, he was
cautiously making his way, on hands and knees, towards the head of the
ravine, where he could look down upon the Indians beneath. As yet he was
protected from their fire by the bank itself--his lean form distinctly
outlined against the eastern sky. He reached a stunted tree that grew on
the very edge of the gorge, and there he halted, brought his rifle close
under his shoulder, in readiness to aim, and then raised himself slowly
to his feet, lifted his head higher, higher, as he peered over. Suddenly
a quick, eager light shone in his face, a sharp movement of his rifle,
as though he were about to raise it to the shoulder, when, bang!--a puff
of white smoke floated up from the head of the ravine, "Chips" sprang
convulsively in the air, clasping his hands to his breast, and with one
startled, agonizing cry, "Oh, my God, boys!" plunged heavily forward, on
his face, down the slope--shot through the heart.
Two minutes more, what Indians were left alive were prisoners, and that
costly experiment at an end. That evening, after the repulse of the
grand attack of Roman Nose and Stabber's warriors, and, 'twas said,
hundreds of Crazy Horse's band, we buried poor "Chips," with our other
dead, in a deep ravine. Wild Bill, California Joe, and Cosgrove have
long since gone to their last account, but, among those who knew them,
no scout was more universally mourned than Buffalo Bill's devoted
friend, Jim White.