failed to find him, young Bill discovered that his pony was missing. He
went out to look for it, and found that it had been stolen by a member of
the lynching party named Sharp. He cried out to the man that that was his
pony; whereupon the desperado laughed at him. Bill called him a coward and
told him he would get even with him some day; and then suddenly getting an
idea, he whistled for Turk, and set the dog on the man. The dog ran up to
the pony and bit his hind legs, whereupon the little horse kicked
vigorously and bucked until he had thrown Sharp off. Then began a hot
discussion between Will and Sharp, the one setting the dog on, the other
yelling to have him called off. But in the end Sharp was obliged to
temporize. He returned the pony and went away as fast as he could run.
So the days went on until Isaac Cody was obliged to leave the country. One
of the famous scout's first real adventures occurred at this time. The boy
was scarcely ten years old when one night the family received information
that their father was coming home to see them and to stay for one night,
returning to Fort Leavenworth in the morning. In some way the men of the
community discovered that he was coming. A party was sent out to capture
him as he came through a wooded gulch, and the little family sat around
the hearth, most of them in tears, with the certainty that their father
would be killed that night.
Then the instinct of the young scout came to the surface. Young Bill
proposed that he should ride his pony to a place called Grasshopper Falls,
where his father was staying, and warn him. The boy had been sick with a
fever; but he got out of bed, mounted his pony, and started in the night
to ride the thirty miles. He had only gone four or five when he heard a
cry of, "Halt!" Instead of stopping, he leaned over Indian fashion behind
his pony, so that nothing but one leg showed on the side from which the
call came, and there he hung as the good horse rushed at his top speed
through the ambuscade. As he did not stop, the men began firing at him,
and he could hear the bullets flying over him. He got through safely,
however, and succeeded in getting to Grasshopper Falls just as his father
was starting. It is interesting to know that this ride taken in the night
by a sick boy not old enough to go to school was ten miles longer than the
famous ride of General Philip Sheridan in the Civil War.
Then came hard times for the little Cody family. The father died, and the
mother had no means of supporting her children and keeping up the farm.
Young Bill, then eleven years old, made up his mind that it was his duty
to support them. He could not stay at home, as he was not big enough to
attend to the work of the farm.
It seemed an almost impossible task, because in addition to all their
poverty there was a mortgage of one thousand dollars against their farm,
and if they did not pay this shortly their own home would be taken away
from them. Mrs. Cody was a brave woman, and she felt that if it were not
for that mortgage she could have managed to scrape along and keep the
family alive. In the many talks which they had as to what they should do,
the boy told his mother that if she could fight this claim he would try to
earn the money.
This was his idea. There was a firm--a famous one in the history of that
part of the United States--named Russell, Majors & Waddell, frontiersmen
who had gradually built up a line of freight wagons that went from St.
Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco, two thousand miles across the plains
and mountains, carrying the freight that was shipped from the East to the
West and bringing back freight from California to the East. These goods
were packed in huge wagons with big canvas tops, drawn by sometimes ten
and sometimes twenty teams of oxen. There was so much danger in these
trips from Indians and outlaws that they never started without several
wagons in a little caravan, with a guard of frontiersmen all armed and
ready to repel any attack from whatever source. Each night they camped in
certain places along the trail where there was water and, if possible,
wood. They cooked their own meals. They set up their pickets and guards,
and started on again in the morning to the next camp. The journey took
about a month; and time and time again the whole outfit would fail to
appear at the other end. It had been attacked and all the men killed by
Indians or by the robbers of the plains. And sometimes the next caravan
would find the remnants of the wagons and the dead bodies of men and oxen.
It was Bill Cody's idea to see if he could not get a chance to travel as
what is called an "extra" on one of these caravans, and forthwith he
presented himself at the office of the firm in Fort Leavenworth. One of
the members of the firm had known his father, and so he treated the boy
kindly. But he told him frankly that a boy of his age would be of no use.
Bill, however, said that he could ride and shoot, that he could herd
cattle and do a lot of other things. He wanted to be an "extra." Finally,
he was so earnest in his desire, that Mr. Majors consented; and there is
an interesting document which was signed by the two which shows what was
expected and what were the dangers of such work. This paper reads as
follows:
"I, Wm. F. Cody, do hereby solemnly swear before the great and living God,
that during my engagement with, and while I am in the employ of, Russell,
Majors & Waddell, I will not, under any circumstances, use profane
language, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employe of the
firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be
faithful to my duties, and shall direct all my acts so as to win the
confidence of my employers. So help me God."
And so the "boy extra" began his work. At night he slept in a blanket
under a wagon, and by day he did whatever he was given to do.
Day after day, week after week, they traveled slowly over the huge plains,
the "bull whackers"--the men who drove the huge oxen--constantly snapping
their enormous whips and urging the beasts on as fast as possible. It was
a monotonous life, except when some incident occurred, and then the
incident was likely to be one of life and death, depending on the
quickness, accuracy of aim, and alertness of the men in the "bull train."
They had gone only about thirty-five miles from Fort Kearny, one of the
places where they stopped near the Platte River, when young Bill suddenly
saw the three pickets drop flat on the ground, and the next moment he
heard shots and saw a band of Indians riding toward them. Instantly the
men in the bull train--all frontiersmen--made a circle of the wagons, got
into the circle themselves, and began firing at the Indians. The red men
wheeled in a big curve, firing as they went, and then rode off a short
distance on the plain out of gun shot and stood watching the white men.
Buffalo Bill has already told this story in his own words earlier in the
book. But he does not tell what it seems impossible to believe--that this
boy of eleven years saved the lives of the entire outfit; and so it is
well to mention the fact here. The consultation which the men had while
the Indians waited proved that it was useless to stay where they were.
Indians began to come from all quarters and outnumbered the whites ten to
one. It was therefore decided to leave the train to the mercy of the
Indians and make a dash for a creek where they could hide behind the
embankment. This was successfully carried out and they then started for
Fort Kearny, walking in the water and keeping watch over the top of the
bank. As night came on the little boy began to get tired and weak. He
could not keep up with the others, and in the excitement and darkness they
did not miss him as he gradually fell behind. So the little fellow was
trudging along, his rifle over his shoulder, perhaps a hundred yards
behind the party, when to his amazement he saw the feathered head of an
Indian poke over the bank before him and behind the others of his party.
The Indian did not see him, for he was looking toward the others. With the
quickness and instinct which made Buffalo Bill what he was, the lad put up
his rifle, and the first warning his friends had of any attack in the rear
was the sound of a shot, and the sound, too, of the body of the dead
Indian rolling down into the creek. That was Buffalo Bill's first Indian,
and the story of the boy who had saved the bull train went all over the
frontier country in an incredibly short space of time.
II
LITTLE BILL AT SCHOOL AND AT THE TRAPS
Now began days of trouble for the young frontier boy. The family
difficulties were not so serious as they had seemed at first. Mrs. Cody
was able to keep the farm, and realizing that her boy, while promising to
make a good frontiersman, was not getting any education, she showed him
the necessity of having the "man of the family" go to school.
Near their home some of the settlers had contributed money for the
building of a little schoolhouse and for the payment of a teacher who was
to come from the East and teach their children. Mrs. Cody made up her mind
that Bill should go there to school, and after much discussion he began
his school days.
Those must have been strange school days as we think of school now. The
little one-room shanty on the plain had nothing in it but a few boards of
the simplest kind that would serve as desks, a stove, and a few, very few,
books. The scholars were a wild lot, quite unused to any kind of
discipline. There was no idea in their minds of promptness, of getting to
school on time, of behaving while they were in school, or of studying very
hard over their lessons. In fact, their parents had had very little
education, and there was nothing in all that country that made people
believe in any discipline. Then, too, the teacher was not a very good one.
In fact, it would have been hard to get a man to go out on that wild
frontier who could make a living in the East. So the school was a somewhat
uproarious affair. The boys had numerous fights. They came when they
liked. They went hunting or fishing as they saw fit. They got a good many
beatings from the teacher and laughed over them afterward. They teased the
girls, and again and again the school teacher, unable to cope with them,
settled matters by driving them out of the little house and locking the
door.
In the midst of this crowd of youngsters young Bill began his first day.
He was known to them all and to all their parents for miles around as the
boy who had saved the bull train, as a fine shot, and as a good deal of a
hero. Besides this he was a terrible tease, not only to his own sisters,
but to every one else's sisters.
Not many days had passed when a feud grew up between him and another boy
of the school. This soon developed into fights, finally ending in the
arrival of old Turk at the school. The school, like all other houses, had
no cellar. It rested a foot or two above the ground. Bill's rival in the
school was a boy named Gobel, and he, too, owned a dog. When Turk arrived
in search of his young master the school was in session, and a moderate
amount of order had been maintained for some time. Then suddenly the
scholars and the teacher heard beneath them a fierce growl, then another,
then a series of howls and cries. And everyone knew that within a few
inches of them, only separated by the floor, there was a fine dogfight in
progress. That was enough for the scholars. They jumped over their seats,
crowded out through the door, and stood around the schoolhouse watching
Turk and Gobel's dog fight. Each dog was urged on by one of the two
factions. It was not long before Turk had beaten his rival and driven him
away with his tail between his legs. Whereupon young Gobel said that
although his dog might be beaten, he could lick Will Cody. That was enough
for the young frontier boy, and, in spite of all the teacher could do, a
ring was soon formed by the scholars and a thoroughbred prize fight
started. Gobel was much larger and older than Will, and the latter knew
that he would be beaten shortly. He must resort to some stratagem, and
though it seems strange to us now, out on that frontier, and especially to
a boy who had actually been obliged to kill men to save his own life, any
means of winning the fight was right. So the little fellow thinking all
the time while he was in the midst of his struggle, drew his knife and
stuck it into the fleshy part of Steve Gobel's leg. The moment Steve saw
the blood he screamed with terror and cried out that he was killed.
Thereupon all the children took to their heels and ran to tell their
parents that Will Cody had killed Gobel. Then the teacher took a hand, and
so did the parents of many of the children, and it looked as if it would
go hard with poor Bill. At all events, he did not care to stay at home,
and not knowing what else to do, he ran away down the trail, happening to
come upon one of the wagon trains of his first employers, Russell, Majors
& Waddell, as he ran. The boss of the outfit was a man named Willis, and
when the boy told his story Willis promised to look after him and take him
again as a boy extra, first offering to go back to the school with him and
lick Gobel, and the teacher too, if Bill said so. It was only a few
moments when Gobel's father and a couple of men came up to arrest the boy,
but they had to deal with men who were used to that sort of thing every
day of their lives, and the pursuers soon discovered that it was wise for
them to turn around and go home. But there was no more school for young
Cody at present, and so he again became a member of a bull train.
During this short term of service with the freighters the boy had another
experience which nearly ended his career, and which to any boy who lives
in a pleasant home and never sees any such life can scarcely be much more
than a fairy tale, it is so terrible and seems so impossible. The boy had
a short time with nothing to do between trips in the winter, and he
decided, as money was necessary, to go on a hunting trip with a party of
trappers. There was a chance of making considerable money by trapping
animals and selling their furs. As a matter of fact, the trapping was very
successful, and young Bill contributed distinctly his part to the family
treasury. It was in the midst of this trip, while he was in an absolutely
uninhabited country, making a round of his traps, that he came upon three
Indians, each leading a pony loaded with skins. It was a case of three to
one, and the moment he discovered them they discovered him. He saw the
leading Indian put up his rifle and aim it at him. Here was a case, one of
the many that came later, when the young frontier boy unquestionably saved
his life by his own quickness and skill. Actually before the Indian, who
was no greenhorn at such matters, could aim his rifle and fire, Will Cody
had shot him dead. The other two Indians fired arrows, one of which went
through the boy's hat; but without stopping, he turned around and cried,
as if to his companions:
"Here they are! This way! This way!"
And then--all this taking place in an incredibly short space of time--he
wounded one Indian with his revolver as the two turned and fled; so that,
instead of being killed himself, he killed one Indian, wounded another,
overcame the third, and marched into camp with their three ponies and all
the skins that they had gathered.
It was on a similar trapping expedition that the following episode
occurred. The boy had been so successful and had made so much money that
he decided on another trip. Not finding any party of men starting out, he
got up an expedition of his own with a friend of his named David Phillips.
The two youngsters bought an ox-team wagon and started out. They were
after beaver, and when they were somewhere in the vicinity of Fort
Leavenworth they struck a country full of beaver dams. Here they camped in
a cave in the hillside which they fixed up for a permanent home. They
stored the food they had brought and went to work setting their traps. At
every hour of the day and night they were likely to run upon Indians, who
never waited to parley, but killed whatever white men they saw as soon as
they came upon them, scalping them and leaving them dead or dying wherever
they might have fallen.
These two boys, therefore, were constantly on the watch. Every bush, every
tree, every rock, might conceal an Indian, and by practicing this
instinct, just as a sailor on a ship will see a sail that anyone else
might think was a cloud or a speck on the horizon, these boys of the
plains could discover, in a range of many miles over plain or rolling
country, the slightest thing that was unusual or unexplainable. A little
spot of color in a tree or bush that was not exactly the color of a winter
leaf would mean to them an ambuscade of Indians. The slightest impression
in the earth which was different from impressions left there by nature
meant the trail of a party of Indians. Every instant while they were
moving along in the day or night their eyes were roaming over the country
round about to pick out any one of these tiny but unusual signs.
The boys had been attending to their work of trapping for many days
without seeing any unusual sign. One night they came to their camp and had
eaten supper, when their oxen began to bellow and leap about. The boys
grabbed their rifles, ran to the corral, and discovered that a bear was in
the vicinity. Phillips fired first and wounded the animal. But that only
made him the more savage. The boy just managed to leap out of the bear's
way when Bill fired into his mouth and killed him. But it was a close
call, as the dead beast fell actually on the body of Phillips. It was a
case of having saved the boy's life, and the chance of returning the favor
came only too soon.
It was the next day, when Bill Cody slipped and broke his leg. The other
boy carried him back to the camp, made splints, bound up his leg, and
stopped the bleeding; and then the two sat down to decide what should be
done. The nearest settlement was a hundred miles away. It was absolutely
impossible for Cody to walk that distance. His friend could not carry him,
and in the fright which the bear had given the two oxen one had killed
itself, and the other had become so maimed that it had to be shot. What
the youngsters were to do they did not know. No one was nearer than a
hundred miles, and there was no way of getting a boy with a broken leg
that distance. Yet it was a case of starving to death or of doing
something at once. Therefore the two trappers, hardly fourteen years old,
decided that Phillips should start at once and walk the hundred miles for
assistance.
To go and come back would take him twenty days at least. That meant twenty
days lying in a cave for Bill, without his having the power even to get up
and go outside. Yet there was nothing else to do, and the good nerve of
the two boys was sufficient for the occasion.
Phillips made Cody as comfortable as he could and put all the food they
had near him. They figured out just how much he was to eat each day in
order to hold out until assistance should be brought, and then shaking
hands, Phillips left him.
The poor boy felt too lonely and heartbroken to eat much of anything in
the first day or two. He counted the days as they passed by cutting a
notch in a stick of wood each day. Gradually his leg healed, and in the
course of two weeks he could move about a little. That alone relieved the
pressure of loneliness, for hobbling to the mouth of the cave and looking
outside was a very different thing from lying perfectly still in one
position day after day. He tried to use up some of the time by studying
the school books which his mother had asked him to take with him, and it
was in the midst of one of these attempts to pass away the hours by
reading over again what he had already read a dozen times, that he looked
up and saw an Indian in war paint standing inside the cave gazing at him.
[Illustration: HE LOOKED UP AND SAW INDIANS IN WAR PAINT STANDING INSIDE
THE CAVE, GAZING AT HIM.]
In a moment a dozen or more warriors had followed the first. The boy
thought his last day had come, for the delay that had occurred already
was a longer time than the Indians usually gave any white man to live if
they were in a position to put him out of existence. The chief in his
guttural tones, without changing his expression at all, said:
"How?"
Bill said: "How?" and then they looked at one another, the boy's mind
flying along all the possible schemes which an expert frontiersman could
think of to prolong a discussion that might possibly save his life. As he
was thinking, gazing thus at the Indians one after another, he suddenly
recognized one of them who was a chief named Rain-in-the-Face, an Indian
whom he had once befriended in a way that the red man appreciates.
It seems that once, some time before, Bill had found the man in difficulty
and had given him something to eat and a blanket to sleep in. Instantly
the boy's mind, well aware of the peculiar kind of gratitude Indians feel,
began to work upon this. First he showed his leg and the bandages and
told the story of his mishap, gaining as much time as he could in that
way. Then suddenly he turned to Rain-in-the-Face and reminded him of how
once their positions had been exactly reversed and how he had helped the
Indian to get what he most needed. Rain-in-the-Face remembered the episode
perfectly, and after a consultation he told Cody that although he and his
friends were out in search of scalps, they would not molest him, but that
that was the limit of their kindness.
The Indians ransacked the cave, took everything that was of value from it,
leaving only a small amount of food. And yet after they were gone the boy
was so thankful for the chance that had thrown this one Indian in his way
and had saved his life that he could not even complain of the starvation
which stared him in the face. He took what little food was left and
divided it up, allowing ten days beyond the twenty for the return of
Phillips, and kept strictly to the portion each day that would keep him in
some sort of food until the thirty days were up.
A day or two after the episode of the Indians a heavy snowstorm set in,
and lasted for so long that when it finally ceased the mouth of the cave
was entirely covered with snow. That seemed almost the last straw, for
little or no light came into the cave, the cold was intense, and the boy
was unable to go out. Hour by hour, day in and day out, he sat there,
unable to read any more and without any appetite for the little food he
could allow himself.
Three weeks passed--one day over the time in which Phillips might have
returned. The little fellow's mind almost gave way from the strain that
was put on him as he sat there with night following day, and no
change--only expectancy.
Twenty-eight days passed. He had but a day or so more of food. If help did
not come within the next three days at the most, he would starve to death.
To add to his misery, most of the wood that had been left was used up.
So the boy sat on the twenty-ninth day, huddled over the little flame that
he could spare himself, hardly realizing now the passage of time, when he
suddenly heard his name called. It seemed to him that he must be dreaming.
He sat perfectly still listening, unable even to make a reply, and then
the name rang out again and was repeated time after time. With all the
strength he had left he answered the call, and it was his answering cry
that enabled Phillips and the relief party to find the cave and begin
digging through the snow.
When the two boys came together Bill Cody's nerves gave way and he was
carried out more dead than alive. But he was alive and bound to have many
more of these hairbreadth escapes that make perhaps as extraordinary a
record as could be told of any man who has ever lived.
These adventures, which read to-day as if they came out of a wild, unreal
story of adventure, happening as they did in the life of this boy not yet
fifteen years old, prepared the way for a youth and early manhood of such
extraordinary usefulness to the plains that Cody by the time the Civil War
came was one of the most expert frontiersmen, guides, and scouts that
existed in the United States. And yet in 1860 he was but fifteen years
old, too young, in other words, to go to college to-day, younger than most
boys now when they get their first shotgun or rifle.
III
THE PONY EXPRESS RIDER