of a gang, the other members of which were somewhere in ambush along the
trail. On reaching the first relay station he deposited his prisoners with
the agent and then started on.
There were no other passengers. He had no sooner gotten away from the
station than, stopping again, he cut open one of the cushions of the
coach, and taking the money from the box, put it inside the cushions and
then patched up the opening. After that he remounted the box and rode on.
Within an hour, while driving through a bit of timber, the expected
happened. The coach was held up by half a dozen men. They started to look
for the treasure. Cody told them a long story of two men who had been
riding as passengers, who had held him up in a lonely spot, taken the
treasure, and disappeared into the timber. The gang immediately recognized
their confederates, and in a fury at being thus deceived, they waited only
long enough to ask him if they were mounted. On receiving an answer that
they were not and also a description of the direction they had taken, the
highwaymen left him in peace and rode in hot haste after their
confederates.
And the driver of the overland stage finished his journey and deposited
the treasure into the hands that it was intended for.
V
THE INDIAN CAMPAIGNS WITH THE ARMY
Anyone who will read the history of the United States after the Civil War
will come upon a long series of campaigns of the United States army in the
West against the American Indians. These Indians, as has already been
said, constantly being more and more confined, had now only the great
American desert and the Rocky Mountains to live upon. They existed there
in enormous numbers. They hunted the almost limitless herds of buffalo and
deer. They fought, whenever opportunity offered, whatever white men came
upon them. The attempt of the government was to give the Indians certain
territories on which they could live in different parts of that country.
These territories were called Indian reservations, and some of them still
exist; but at that time--that is, between 1870 and 1880--the Indians were
still in their native wild civilization, and declined to be limited to
these reservations.
They had no desire to become farmers. They wanted to roam over the plains,
and hunt, and fish, and live as they were born to live. They could not be
made like white men. And hence the result was a series of campaigns which
gradually exterminated most of them and killed the spirit of the others.
One of these campaigns was the famous fight of General Custer, whose
command was practically annihilated in the famous battle of Little Big
Horn. Here again the qualities of Cody came into great demand. He was one
of the greatest scouts in these Indian campaigns. His experiences, his
fights, would number into the hundreds in a short decade. General
Sheridan, who was put in command of the troops to quell the Indian
uprising, made him the chief of his scouts, and during these years he was
constantly at work leading the American troops against the Indians.
Some time before he had acquired the name which now every boy in this
country and almost every boy in the civilized world knows him
by--"Buffalo Bill"--and the story of how this name was given to him is
well worth the telling.
Cody had always been a great shot--not only an accurate, but a wonderfully
quick shooter. This skill and quickness had saved his life many times.
When he was not at work at some specific duty he would hunt buffaloes,
riding forth over the plains on a horse he had trained to hunt. As a herd
of buffaloes--and there were hundreds of them--was seen approaching some
camp where Cody was, he would mount his horse, throw the reins on his
neck, and sit quietly while the animal ran diagonally toward the herd at
full speed, selected of his own will the last of the herd, and worked with
all his keen, nervous ability until he brought his rider close alongside
the shaggy animal. There is but one spot that is very vulnerable in a
buffalo. You may shoot a dozen times and hardly wound him, but if one shot
reaches the vital spot, the animal drops dead in his tracks. Again and
again the men of the plains have seen Cody start out on his horse and
within a few minutes from the firing of the first shot drop ten or a dozen
of the wild beasts of the prairie.
The story of how the name of Buffalo Bill came to be given to him by
common consent is this: There was a man named William Comstock who had
been called by his friends "Buffalo Bill" because he was such a successful
buffalo hunter. When he heard that Cody was being called "Buffalo Bill"
too, he disputed his right to that title. Cody heard of it, and told some
of the officers of the army post that if there was any dispute, he for one
was willing to settle it by an actual contest in buffalo killing. Comstock
was as game as Cody, and accepted the challenge. And so the plainsmen
arranged the contest.
They settled upon a huge tract of prairie near Sheridan, Kansas, and when
the appointed day arrived everybody who could reach the spot came to
witness the contest. Officers, soldiers, railroadmen, scouts, pioneers,
and all the inhabitants of that country gathered in a large crowd. Judges
were appointed and the two claimants to the title were on hand. It was an
easy matter in those days and in that place to find a herd of buffaloes,
so that within an hour after the start they had sighted a herd and started
for the hunt.
As soon as the herd was sighted the two men separated, each working on his
own account and getting all the buffaloes he could. Cody killed
thirty-eight, to twenty-three for Comstock, and the sight of sixty-one
buffaloes lying dead upon the plain must have been a wonderful one.
Then they had a gala lunch, and in the afternoon started again. And then
the final crowning feat was apparent. In the second contest Cody, in order
to leave no doubt of the matter, rode his horse without either saddle or
bridle, and even then he killed eighteen to the other's fourteen. From
that time on to this day no one has questioned his right to the title of
"Buffalo Bill."
It would be impossible here to go into the many episodes that occurred
while Bill, under the title of Colonel William F. Cody, was chief of the
United States Army Scouts. It is only possible to say that in that
capacity he not only made it possible for the United States army to
accomplish a work impossible without scouts who had been brought up in
that kind of fight, but it is safe to say that if General Custer had had
him with him, the frightful massacre of Little Big Horn would never have
occurred. But in all that time Buffalo Bill was at work upon his chosen
profession, with the exception of a short time when, against his will, he
was made a justice of the peace.
There is an interesting and amusing episode told of his short legal career
that is worth mentioning briefly here. Shortly after his appointment,
which was made because of the necessity of having a justice of the peace
at hand in the army post, a couple came to him to be married. He was very
much disturbed and embarrassed, scarcely knowing what to do, but he got
along all right until the end of the service, and then, to the amazement
of the assembled party, he ended all by saying:
"Whom God and Buffalo Bill hath joined together, let no man put asunder."
In the midst of these years of scouting in the Indian fights the great
Western scout was always in difficulty as to the management of his
financial affairs. He always has said that he was not born a business man.
When he had money he spent it like a gentleman, no matter how much it was.
Once when he was not busy in Indian campaigning he conceived the idea of
representing on the stage certain phases of life on the plains in order to
make some money. The first venture took place in Rochester, New York. In
order to make the show as realistic as possible, he himself and two other
scouts were put into a play written especially for them, and the
descriptions of the first performance make an episode in Buffalo Bill's
life that must have been as amusing and as extraordinary as the episodes
of his life on the plains were exciting and dangerous. The three were
stagestruck from the time the curtain went up, and all of them forgot
their lines. But Buffalo Bill, finding that nothing was going to happen
and realizing that the audience were sitting in their seats expecting
something to happen, answered the questions put to him by the manager and
told a story. That poor manager must have had a bad quarter of an hour.
He was also taking part in the piece, and was utterly at a loss what to
say or do. Bill told a story of one of his experiences on the plains in
his own language. This proving to meet with the approval of the audience,
the manager continued asking questions, drawing forth story after story,
so that when the play ended the audience felt full of enthusiasm for the
extraordinary show, which in reality did not contain one single line of
the original drama.
The scheme was not successful, however, and some years later Buffalo Bill
got together some friendly Indian chiefs and some frontiersmen and
constructed a simple play of the plains which was an immense success. At
different times for five years this play--"The Scout of the Plains"--was
played in nearly every city of any size in the United States. Frequently
it would be having a run in some town when word would come from a
commanding officer at a Western army post that the Indians were on the
warpath again. Then the play would be closed, and the scouts, with their
chief at their head, would hasten to the plains and begin again their
real warfare, returning to the sham fights of the play when the real ones
were over.
And it was this remarkable success in representing to people in Eastern
cities the actual life on the plains that gave Colonel Cody the courage to
carry out an idea which had been in his mind for many years--that is, of
putting before people a true representation of the different phases of the
life in that immense country, thousands of miles in length and width,
which existed between 1840 and 1870, and which has now gone forever.
VI
BUFFALO BILL AND HIS SHOW
There is only a word to be said of Buffalo Bill's "Wild West," because the
space at our command does not make it possible to tell the whole story in
detail. The enterprise is now one of huge proportions, but it started much
smaller. The reason for its enormous popularity and increase is that it is
almost unique among plays or shows of every kind. For it gives to the
audience a real picture, with real characters, of a most exciting period
of civilization in this country that never has existed anywhere else, and
that never will exist again. The Indians that have mock fights in Buffalo
Bill's arena to-day are absolutely the same men who used to track him and
try to kill him in the Indian campaigns twenty or thirty years ago. The
Deadwood coach that is attacked in the arena by Indians with the shooting
of guns is the same coach that used to run across the plains and that has
time and time again been attacked in the same way, but with very different
intent. The cowboys and frontiersmen who ride are the same men who used to
live on the plains and herd cattle, and the ponies they ride are the
bucking bronchos of the West.
There have often been doubts expressed as to the reality of some of this.
One instance is enough to show the contrary. When the great Wild West Show
went to Europe and traveled about in the ancient cities of Italy, they
came finally to Rome and gave their daily exhibition there. In one of the
boxes sat an Italian nobleman, the Prince of Sermonetta, who made the
statement to his friends that he doubted whether the broncho busters--the
men who ride the bucking bronchos--were really as good riders as they
seemed. He thought the ponies were trained to buck.
This came to the ears of Buffalo Bill, and he answered it in his usual
polite but sturdy fashion. Then the nobleman met him and told him that he
had some wild horses on his estate in the country that had never been
ridden and could not be controlled except in a mass. Buffalo Bill at once
said that if he would have the horses brought to his arena some afternoon
during the show he would like to have his men make a try at riding them.
Nothing pleased the nobleman more, and of course the experiment was
advertised all over Italy.
On the appointed day the horses were brought on in cars. There was
considerable difficulty and a good deal of excitement in getting them out
of the cars and into the arena. As soon as they found themselves loose
after being cooped up in such undignified fashion, they were wild indeed.
The arena was cleared of everything except those furious beasts, and then
half a dozen cowboys calmly walked in with their lariats to make the
trial. It was probably the most interesting exhibition ever given by the
Wild West Show. Quietly and warily the cow punchers threw their lassoes,
wound them about the feet of the horses, threw them, and held them down.
Then they saddled and bridled them, and then the riding began. The show
was not materially delayed; the audience left and got home at the usual
time; but before they had quitted the arena every one of the wild horses
was ridden quietly and in dignified fashion around the ring and up in
front of the nobleman's box, and it was reported that no one was more
pleased than that same nobleman himself.
There are many additional and interesting features to Buffalo Bill's show
to-day, such as the Cossack riders, the San Juan battle, and the regiments
of different European armies. But they do not add to the value of what
will go down in history as "Buffalo Bill's Wild West." That is all true as
gold. That is justly remarkable because of the real way in which it tells
a real story, and if the boy of to-day who reads this would like to see
what the Indians and the white men of the Western plains were in those
days, how they fought, how they traveled, and how they lived, he may see
it still by going to see the show. He will never see it anywhere else
again.
In ending this little sketch of a remarkable man it is worth telling an
episode of the experience of these natives of the wilderness in the midst
of the centuries-old cities of the Old World. Everywhere the company went
in England, in Europe, the famous scout was entertained by royalty and
entertained them in return. One day after they had opened in London the
King, then the Prince of Wales, expressed a desire to see the show. A box
was prepared and the royal party attended. The whole exhibition was so new
and interesting that in a short time the Prince went again, and expressed
a desire to ride around the ring in the Deadwood coach. Buffalo Bill was
ready and called for five passengers. The five passengers who accepted
were the Prince of Wales himself on the box beside Buffalo Bill, and four
kings who happened to be visiting in England--the King of Denmark, the
King of Saxony, the King of Greece, and the Crown Prince of Austria. As
usual, the coach started. But this time the Indians who attacked and the
cowboys who rescued the coach had been instructed to "do something a
little extra," to give a little louder yells, to fire a few more shots.
And it is no wonder if, as the rumor goes--though proof does not
exist--that before the ride was over some of the four kings were under the
seats. When the trip was finished and the Prince of Wales congratulated
Buffalo Bill, he said to him:
"Colonel, did you ever hold four kings like that before?"
And Cody replied: "I have held four kings more than once. But, your Royal
Highness, I never held four kings and a royal joker before."
THE END