An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill Part 11

The negro troops, who had been boasting of what they would do to the Indians, were now singing a different tune.

"We'll jes' blow 'em off'm de fahm," they had said, before there was an enemy in sight. Now, every time the foe would charge us, some of the darkies would cry:

"Heah dey come! De whole country is alive wif 'em. Dere must be ten thousand ob dem. Ma.s.sa Bill, does you-all reckon we is ebber gwine to get out o' heah?"

The major, who had been lying under the cannon since receiving his wound, asked me if I thought there was a chance to get back to the fort. I replied that there was, and orders were given for a retreat, the cannon being left behind.

During the movement a number of our men were killed by the deadly fire of the Indians. But night fell, and in the darkness we made fairly good headway, arriving at Fort Hays just at daybreak. During our absence cholera had broken out at the post. Five or six men were dying daily.

For the men there was a choice of dangers--going out to fight the Indians on the prairie, or remaining in camp to be stricken with cholera. To most of us the former was decidedly the more inviting.

"The Rise and Fall of Modern Rome"--was the chapter of frontier history in which I next figured. For a time I was part owner of a town, and on my way to fortune. And then one of those quick changes that mark Western history in the making occurred and I was left--but I will tell you the story.

At the town of Ellsworth, which I visited one day while carrying dispatches to Fort Harker, I met William Rose, who had a contract for trading on the right-of-way of the Kansas Pacific near Fort Hays. His stock had been stolen by the Indians, and he had come to Ellsworth to buy more.

Rose was enthusiastic about a project for laying out a town site on the west side of Big Creek, a mile from the fort, where the railroad was to cross. When, in response to a request for my opinion, I told him I thought the scheme a big one, he invited me to come in as a partner. He suggested that after the town was laid out and opened to the public we establish a store and saloon.

I thought it would be a grand thing to become half owner of a town, and at once accepted the proposition. We hired a railroad engineer to survey the town site and stake it into lots. Also we ordered a big stock of the goods usually kept in a general merchandise store on the frontier. This done, we gave the town the ancient and historical name of Rome. As a starter we donated lots to anyone who would build on them, reserving for ourselves the corner lots and others which were best located. These reserved lots we valued at two hundred and fifty dollars each.

When the town was laid out I wrote my wife that I was worth $250,000, and told her I wanted her to get ready to come to Ellsworth by rail.

She was then visiting her parents at St. Louis, with our baby daughter whom we had named Arta.

I was at Ellsworth to meet her when she arrived, bringing the baby.

Besides three or four wagons, in which the supplies for the new general store and furniture for the little house I had built were loaded, I had a carriage for her and the baby. The new town of Rome was a hundred miles west. I knew that it would be a dangerous trip, as the Indians had long been troublesome along the railroad, and I realized the danger more fully because of the presence of my wife and little daughter.

A number of immigrants bound for the new town accompanied us.

The first night out I formed the men into a company, one squad to stand watch while the others slept. All the early part of the evening I went the rounds of the camp, much to my wife's annoyance.

"Why are you away so much?" she kept asking. "It is lonesome here, and I need you."

Rather than let her know of my uneasiness about the Indians, I told her I was trying to sell lots to the men while they were en route. As the night wore on and everything seemed quiet I prepared to get a little rest. I did not take my clothes off, and, much to my wife's surprise, slept with my rifle and revolvers close by me. I had just dropped off to sleep when I heard shots, and knew they could mean nothing but Indians.

The attacking party was small and we were fully prepared. When they discovered this they fired a few shots and galloped away.

The second night was almost a repet.i.tion of the first. After another party had been repulsed, Mrs. Cody asked me if I had brought her and the baby out on the Plains to be killed.

"This is the kind of a life I lead every day and get fat on it," I said. But she did not seem to think it especially congenial.

Everybody turned out to greet us when we arrived in Rome. Even the gambling-hall houses and the dance-halls closed in our honor. The next day we moved into our little house. That night there was a veritable fusillade of revolver shots outside the window.

"What is that?" asked Mrs. Cody.

"Just a serenade," I said.

"Are yon firing blank cartridges?"

"No. If it became known that revolvers were loaded with blank cartridges around here we would soon lose some of our most valued citizens. Everybody in town, from the police judge to dishwashers, carries a pistol."

"Why?"

"To keep law and order."

That puzzled my wife. She said that in St. Louis policemen kept law and order, and wanted to know why we didn't have them to do it out here. I informed her that a policeman would not last very long in a town like this, which was perfectly true.

On my return from a hunting trip a few days later I met a man who had come into town on the stage-coach, and whom Mrs. Cody had seen looking over the town site from every possible angle. He told me he thought I had selected a good town site--and I agreed with him. He asked me to go for a ride around the surrounding country with him the next day. I told him I was going on a buffalo hunt. He had never killed a buffalo, he said. He wanted to get a fine head to take back with him, and would be grateful if I would take him with me. I promised to see that he got a nice head if he came along, and early the next morning rode down to his hotel. He was dressed in a smart hunting costume and had his rifle. We started for the plains, my wagons following to gather up the meat we should kill.

As we rode out I explained to him how I hunted. "I kill as many buffalo as I want," I said. "This I call a 'run.' The wagons come along afterward and the butchers cut the meat and load it." When I went out on my "run" I told him where to shoot to kill. But when my work was done I met him coming back crestfallen. He had failed to get his buffalo down, although he had shot him three times.

"Come along with me," I said. "I see another herd over there. I am going to change saddles with you and let you ride the best buffalo horse on the Plains."

He was astonished and delighted to think I would let him ride Brigham, the most famous buffalo horse in the West. When we drew near the herd I pointed out a fine four-year-old bull with a splendid head. I galloped alongside. Brigham spotted the buffalo I wanted, and after my companion's third shot the brute fell. My pupil was overjoyed with his success, and appeared to be so grateful to me that I felt sure I should be able to sell him three or four blocks of Rome real estate at least.

I invited him to take dinner, and served as part of the repast the meat of the buffalo he had shot. The next morning he looked me up and told me he wanted to make a proposition to me.

"What is it?" I asked. I had thought I was the one who was going to make a proposition.

"I will give you one-eighth of this town site," he said.

The nerve of this proposal took me off my feet. Here was a total stranger offering me one-eighth of my own town site as a reward for what I had done for him.

I told him that if he killed another buffalo I would have to hog-hobble him and send him out of town; then rode off and left him.

This magnanimous offer occurred right in front of my own house. My wife overheard it, and also my reply.

As I rode away, he called out that he wanted to explain, but I was thoroughly disgusted.

"I have no time to listen to you," I shouted over my shoulder.

I was bound out on a buffalo hunt to get meat for the graders twenty miles away on the railroad, and I kept right on going. Three days afterward I rode back over the ridge above the town of Rome and looked down on it.

I took several more looks. The town was being torn down and carted away. The balloon-frame buildings were coming apart section by section.

I could see at least a hundred teams and wagons carting lumber, furniture, and everything that made up the town over the prairies to the eastward.

My pupil at buffalo hunting was Dr. Webb, president of the town-site company of the Kansas Pacific. After I had ridden away without listening to his explanations he had invited the citizens of Rome to come over and see where the new railroad division town of Hays City was to be built. He supplied them with wagons for the journey from a number of rock wagons that had been lent him by the Government to a.s.sist him in the location of a new town. The distance was only a mile, and he got a crowd. At the town site of Hays City he made a speech, telling the people who he was and what he proposed to do. He said the railroad would build its repair-shops at the new town, and there would be employment for many men, and that Hays City was destined soon to be the most important place on the Plains. He had already put surveyors to work on the site. Lots, he said, were then on the market, and could be had far more reasonably than the lots in Rome.

My fellow-citizens straightway began to pick out their lots in the new town. Webb loaned them the six-mule Government wagons to bring over their goods and chattels, together with the timbers of their houses.

When I galloped into Rome that day there was hardly a house left standing save my little home, our general store, and a few sod-houses and dugouts.

Mrs. Cody and the baby were sitting on a drygoods box when I rode up to the store. My partner, Rose, stood near by, whistling and whittling.

"My word, Rose! What has become of our town!" I cried. Rose could make no answer. Mrs. Cody said:

"You wrote me you were worth $250,000."

"We've got no time to talk about that now," I said. "What made this town move away?"

"You ought to have taken Mr. Webb's offer," was her answer.

"Who the d.i.c.kens is Webb?" I stormed. Rose looked up from his whittling. "Bill," he said, "that little flapper-jack was the president of the town-site company for the K.P. Railroad, and he's run such a bluff on our citizens about a new town site that is going to be a division-point that they've all moved over there."